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THE LIVING 
DECALOGUE 

FROM SINAI TO ZION 



BT 

IV. J. COLVILLE 



AUTHOR OF 

"Old and New Psychology" "The Law of 
Correspondences Applied to Healing" "Destiny 
Fulfilled— Fate Conquered," "Text Books of 
Mental Therapeutics" &c, &c. ' 



THE AUSTIN PUBLISHING CO. 
ROCHESTER, N. Y. 



Two 



!8Af?Y 



UASS ^ AXa Ho; 
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Copyright 1905 
By W. J. Colville 



INTRODUCTION 



The following series of twelve lectures are- published 
at the earnest request of students and audiences in var- 
ious parts of America, also in England and Australia, 
who have kindly expressed themselves as desirous that 
these simple, practical expositions of the Ten Com- 
mandments in their spiritual as well as their literal as- 
pects, should be given a wide circulation in permanent 
and portable form. 

Readers are requested to bear in mind that the sub- 
ject treated is not intentionally dealt with in any criti- 
cal temper, nor is any claim made that the treatment of 
the theme is such as to throw any special light on those 
phases of biblical history and teaching which are now 
exciting agitation in controversial circles. 

As the ethical aspects of the Decalogue are far more 
important than the historical ; and, moreover, as the for- 
mer can be tested and applied in daily life and rendered 
serviceable in relation to hourly necessities, while the 
latter can only afford scope for scholarly investigation, 
these suggestive essays are confidently presented to the 
populace with earnest hope mingled with sure expec- 
tancy that as the spoken word has been already found 
helpful, the printed report may prove even more valua- 
ble. 

No attempt has been made to exhaust the inexhausti- 
ble, but the following objects have been clearly present 
before the mental vision of the writer: (i) To enforce 
the salutary doctrine of the universality and endless 
continuity of divine relation and inspiration. (2) To 
reply in no uncertain manner to those superficial read- 
ers of the Decalogue and its traditional surroundings, 
who claim that The Ten Commandments are anything 
less or other than a safe and sure repository of univer- 
sal truth. (3) To detach attention from the merely 
literal circumstances of an allegorical and poetic narra- 
tive, and open out as far as possible in brief suggestive 
language some of those rich interior meanings which lie 
deep below the surface of the outward text. 

Finally let it be stated, that no attempt whatever has 
been made to force conclusions on the reader. This 
volume is the child of conviction, not of dogmatism, and 
it is sent forth into the world solely to arouse thought, 
to deepen faith, to counteract needless skepticism and 



most of all to assist the many who are bewildered be- 
cause of the jargon of contentious discussions around 
them and are honestly seeking for some reasonable view 
of continuous revelation. 

The personal experience of the writer leads to the 
following uncompromising affirmation : The more we 
search into the Decalogue the more we shall appreciate 
the deep and lasting hold it has taken upon all civilized 
humanity, and the more we seek to live by it the more 
we shall love and honor it. 

* W. J. COLVILLE. 

Christmas, 1904. 



LECTURE ONE. 



THE APPROACH TO SINAI. 
An Enquiry into the Nature and Method of Divine 
Revelation. The Eternal Basis of Moral Law. 
When Matthew Arnold declared that in days to 
come much that is in the Bible would be gratefully ac- 
cepted and highly cherished which in his earthly life- 
time was being ruthlessly discarded by intellectual icon- 

mi5 % A?" 8 ,? ttlG ? lscoverv would then have been 
made that the flowing language of poetry, not the rigidly 
exact language of science, had been employed by the 

Tly Sled V01Ced a Pr ° pheCy Which is now bein S ste *d- 
The Bible is foolishly assailed by blind literalists who 
seem utterly incapable of appreciating the sublimity of 
Oriental prose with its magnificent poetic imagery, but 
the assaults now being hurled against the venerable 
f£ a ? e J ar 8 e }y consequent upon the slavish idolatry 
ot the letter which even yet prevails, though to a con- 
stantly modifying extent, among those ultra-conserva- 
tives m strictly orthodox camps, who act as though 
there could be no security for faith or morals if thSr 
own crude adoration of local incidents should be relin- 
quished by the masses. 

Whoever dares to announce convictions must be 
willing to oppose and be opposed by two distinct phases 
V™^^ 8 ' the one ^ostic or materialis- 
tic, the other bigotedly ecclesiastical. Fearless thinkers 
can attord to remain serene in the midst of all contro- 
versies, and today's prophets, like those of olden time 
must proclaim the life-giving spirit of continuous rev- 
elation despite every obstacle which ignorance and pre- 
lh dlc ^. m f a y. th r°wm their path. "The letter killeth but 
the spirit gweth life:' is a saying true forever 

We attempt m this series of consecutive addresses 
an investigation of two mountains, and, stranee to 
is a ^he n soul Wlthhl the ° ther - Sinai is th ^ body; Zion 
• T , he t^e children of Israel are neither Jews exclu- 
sively nor Gentiles exclusively. They are all person- 
alities everywhere who are in process of enlightenment 
of hunS?' T EgY - Pt is a figUre of the sense-life 
tn whTrS, L y; v aan 15 a type of the s P iritual estate 
to which humanity can and will attain, but only b V 

m S S P i a t FOCe ? - Whi( i h we ma ^ fair1 ^ caI1 evolution 
—the evolution of involved potencies. 



6 



Revelations are continuous, but human discoveries 
are not necessarily so without intermissions. < There 
are crises in our lives, days and hours of peculiar sig- 
nificance, and these are periods of judgment. Let 
none say that because nature's processes are unchang- 
ing, that there are no climaxes and no sudden disclos- 
ures. Whoever would argue thus has never contem- 
plated natural phenomena nor is he at all versed in 
the science of Geology. 

The external aspects of existence with which we are 
all superficially familiar illustrate precisely the inner 
workings of spiritual force. Law and order are one. 
Whoever would understand the working out of divine 
purpose in human affairs must grasp and hold the 
supreme thought of universal unity. Our appeal to 
the entire world can be reasonably based upon the 
incontrovertible assertion that all the greatest teach- 
ers of the human race have dealt in natural metaphors 
and taught the multitude in parables. 

Whoever devoutlv and intelligently studies Nature 
discovers God, but whoever takes to Nature his preju- 
dice or his conceit receives back only the echo of his 
own opinions. The foolish one says m his heart, 
"There is no God," and then proclaims that he cannot 
find the God whom he in the seat of his affections de- 
liberately denies. 

The idea of God is inborn, but the multifarious doc- 
trines concerning God with which literature is deluged 
are only so many crystallized limitations of the human 
intellect. 

"God is one and there is no unity like unto the divine 
Unity" So spake Moses Maimonides, the eminent Jew- 
ish philosopher, in the twelfth century, and m these 
words he did but re-echo the oldest and sublimest 
thought of God the human mind has ever entertained. 

All archaeological research is proving that behind po- 
lytheism stands monotheism, for no matter how many 
divine revelations there may be, there is but one Su- 
preme Being, and the one only God is beyond human 
definition. 

Genesis truly teaches that human beings are all ^ in- 
cluded in that divine Image which is God's offspring, 
and Exodus gives a dramatic history of how varying 
are man's experiences as he seeks to interpret his own 
containment. . 

Moses and Aaron are brothers. Aaron is the elder 
but the weaker; Moses, the younger, is the inspired 
prophet, while Aaron, the elder, is only the officiating 
priest. Moses, tho' eighty years of age, when at Horeb 



he sees the mysterious sight of a bush burning with 
iire but unconsumed, is a young man ripe for a mission. 

lheodore Parker, John Greenleaf Whittier and other 
illumined modern teachers and poets have sought to 
universalize this bush, but have permitted it in their 
commentaries and verses to remain largely a vegetable 
lnat bush in its inmost meaning is Human Nature*' 
nothing more and nothing less. ' 

Moses is an anthropologist, a student of human na- 
ture at its highest as well as at its lowest. 

Innumerable opportunities are afforded all of us for 
investigating the crust of human existence; we can 
all inspect the hide of the human animal, the mere 
biped who often claims a quadruped for ancestor. But 
it is given only to the seer, dowered with insight, to 
peer below this covering and to behold something of 
the supernal majesty of the divinity within. Happy 
are they at all times and in all places who turn aside 
with Moses to see this great sight. 

The word of God is Truth, and truth is the only 
word ever spoken by Deity. This word is spoken out 
ot the flame of fire, out of the inmost of man's own 
being for in the soul of humanity is to be found God's 
dwelling-place. If we desire to be deliverers of our 
brethren, emancipators of a race from servitude we 
must listen with inward ears and gaze with inward 
eyes tor no outer inspection of ourselves or of our 
neighbors will convince us that we are other than self- 
ish, sense-bound, even though improved and still im- 
proving animals. 

We have two distinct consciousnesses, one higher 
the other ower.. Indubitable testimony to this is being 
furnished hourly to every one of us through the incon- 
testable medium of our own experience, and in a final 
reckoning it is never another's theory but always our 
own experience that proves convincing. We may listen 
attentively, even reverently,, to wise words which fall 
trom the lips of accepted sages of ancient or modern 
time, but the individual human being must hear a 
responsive echo within his own breast ere he can intel- 
ligently say Amen to another's testimony. 

Moses as an individual appears a personality con- 
cerning whom much scholarly doubt may be expressed 
while the traditional account of the Sinaitic 
tion as having been made to Moses by the Supreme 

loTn'« Z Y h n he u y ^ lsc ? unted ^ rationalistic theo- 
logians as well as by that large class of modern think- 

bv NalnrJl t? 1 ^ - n0t a , VerSe to what the y understand 
by Natural Religion, place no confidence whatever in 



m 



the testimony of those biblical students who seek to 
enforce a literal reading of what is obviously poetry. 
Surely it need not be reiterated that many parts of the 
Old Testament are of obscure origin as historical doc- 
uments, nor does it seem necessary to assert for the 
millionth time that all Oriental teachers depend very 
largely upon poetic allegories to enforce the moral 
and spiritual lessons they seek to inculcate. 

If a critic of the Decalogue shall say that the Ten 
Commandments are three times recorded and that the 
three accounts do not entirely agree, our only answer 
is that we are not much concerned about the time and 
manner of their delivery, as our sole vital interest 
centers in the Spirit, not in the letter, of the Decalogue, 
and if it be further objected that we do not need to 
seek either for inspiration or for moral sanction amid 
the doubtful records of a by-gone a^e, our reply must 
be that as at this very hour these Ten Words are the 
acknowledged basis of enlightened jurisprudence the 
world over they are by no means antiquated but living, 
breathing, palpitating forces in the actual life ot all 
civilized and semi-civilized communities today. 

It is often said that the Commandments were known 
long before the period of Moses, if it be admitted that 
such a personality is historic, and that one by one the 
scattered elements of the Moral Law came together 
by an assimilative and cohesive process explicable 
on the theory of natural moral evolution. Be that as 
it may, the Ten Decrees are here today and multitudes 
of church-going people wherever the English tongue 
is heard, repeat constantly the time-honored petition, 
"Lord have mercy upon us and write all these thy 
laws in our hearts we beseech thee," as soon as the 
reading of the Decalogue is finished. 

Revelation need not startle the senses, but it does 
sometimes enter the citadel of human consciousness 
through the gateway of exterior suggestion. livery 
student of Suggestive Therapeutics is becoming in- 
creasingly familiar with the beneficial effects of out- 
ward means now being constantly employed for the 
readier enforcement of ideal spiritual propositions 
Childlike people, like children, must be accommodated 
with declarations of truth not only adapted to their 
understanding, but presented to them in alluring ex- 
ternal ways. The important thing always is not, How 
did the truth" reach us or through what channel has it 
flowed? but has it reached us at all, and are we in 
any way conscious of its presence within us as a vital- 
izing and uplifting power? 



The three unmistakable means whereby we arrive 
at truth are i 

(1) The way of the corporal senses, which is the 
lowest and most rudimentary way., 

(2) The way of intellectual" approach whereby we 
are led to see the reasonableness and feasibility of what 
is recommended to us. 

(3) The way of interior enlightenment. Sinai in 
its most external aspects stands in class one. Reason- 
able appeals to expediency may be placed in class two 
Interior illumination belongs in class three, and at 
that point we reach Zion. 

Whether any particular individual or race of people 
can be successfully reached by one or another of these 
distinct modes of appeal, depends necessarily upon the 
degree of development reached by the individual, com- 

W. I' °u fif tl0n t0 who1 ? the ap P eal is bein & made. 
We teach the same fundamental verities in kinder- 
gartens as m universities, but we cannot adopt preciselv 
identical methods and we assuredly cannot * employ 
the same text books. * 

in J h wlI S ?° ™ ntradictio * whatever involved in adapt- 
ing truth to the comprehension of the scholar, but 
never should it be regarded as tolerable to tell false- 

hTt l t0 t, Chlldren and th , en indul ^ e the spurious plea 
that as they grow toward maturity they can unlearn 

L h Ve7r°^i^ C h ed da U yr ^ * ^ ^ 
a Il 0 ^,V a Vf e f " ndai P en [ al P oi nts of agreement between 
mav be Jmnf T' 1S ^ ^ ^ manner of mean « 
™h»?J P ? 7 ed - ln 11 con veymg and illustrating truth, 
undiluted verity is all we dare to call "sincere milk" 

it if ton? mfantiIe - digeSti 2 n -. J ust as wroTgfu^as 
mill to •% y . gl6niC stand P° in t to administer sour 
milk to an infant, so erroneous is it to offer falsehood 
in any measure for the acceptance of young or old 
. We beg all our readers to weigh carefully the follow- 
ing incontestable proposition: Truth is unvarying Is 
to quality, but ever enlarging as to quantity in our 
reception of it Nothing ever changes which is reX 
and substantially true, but the measure of truth per- 
ceived at one time is very much less or greater than 
at a " ot ^r time by the same individual. 

a tvne nT c ° SeS tyPe - ° f man is a g Io "ous study and as 
a type hls superiority to Aaron is immeasurable Moses 

ac that er tL Aar ° n - 1S - the Priest; this accoun ts for the 
easny'corrupted 0 " 6 " mCOrruptible while the other is 

a oroXr^nVT Ca i IS f ° r prophets ' and he is 
a prophet, and she only is a prophetess of the Most 



10 



High who is utterly fearless of consequences while 
ever loyal to the utmost vision of truth perceived m- 

Wa When we study the tale of Moses at Horeb, as he 
turns aside to see that great sight the ever-burning 
but ^inconsumable bush, which typifies our true hu- 
manity, we may well enquire how many have there 
been in any age, in any country, who have completely 
turned aside from all else to contemplate an outspread 
heaven-born vision. 

The scientific explorer is always cast m genuine 
prophetic mold, while the hireling preacher of conven- 
tional theology may be a priest after the order of 
Aaron, perpetually offering similar oblations which can 
never make the "comers thereunto ' perfect. 

What is it to turn aside to see? A myriad wonders 
are outspread on every hand wherever we may be so- 
iourning or traveling, but unless we have the open eye 
and open ear we know nothing of all the splendors 
and marvels which surround and adorn our pathway. 

It is never simple doubt which leads to knowledge, 
but quest of fuller truth, even though honest skepticism 
is infinitely preferable to blind, unreasoning belief, or 
that lazy credulity which tacitly accepts everything be- 
cause it is too idle to question anything. 

Genuine revelation comes most perfectly to those 
intrepid and uncompromising men and women who are 
fearless and philanthropic enough to consider nothing 
personal as of any great concern when weighed m the 
scales with general human interest. A very clear light 
is thrown upon the Moses type of character when we 
read even cursorily the leading events m the great 
Egyptian-Hebrew prophet's life history If not born to 
the purple, thoroughly trained to it, heir-apparent to 
the throne of the Pharaohs, this self-consecrated seer 
was not only tacitly willing but actively wishful to sur- 
render every prospect of personal comfort, ease, and 
luxury that he might deliver a race of slaves from 

b °Engfand and America have during the nineteenth 
century given us many shining examples that such 
heroic natures do actually exist, and are by no means, 
as cynics would have us believe, the fanciful creations 
of the overheated imagination of poets and romantic 
novelists. Among many brilliant moral stars of the 
first magnitude the immortal names of John Howard 
and Florence Nightingale as well as of Abraham Lin- 
coln, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garison, George 
Thompson, Lucretia Mott, and scores of others less 
known to universal fame, stand forth conspicuously 



II 



and every one in this illustrious company can well be 
pointed to as a gleaming luminary, blazing the road 
along which troops of coming reformers will be pre- 
pared to tread. 

Those who work only for the world's applause, or 
who are eagerly seeking the thanks of those they de- 
sire to benefit, would do well to study the career of 
that ancient prophet of whom it has well been said by 
pious Israelites, "There has never arisen in Israel a 
prophet like unto Moses who beheld God's similitude" 
limes without number have we been called upon to 
explain such seeming contradictions as the diametric- 
ally opposed statements "No man hath seen God at 
any time and "none can see God's face and live" with 
explicit declarations that Moses saw and conversed 
with God face to face as one man converses with 
another. Laying aside for the present all secondary 
interpretations, which involve a discussion of angels 
and ministering spirits as intermediaries between God 
m heaven and man on earth, we refer to that word 
similitude, which wise Jewish writers have applied 
advisedly, and in strict accordance with the first chapter 
of Genesis which declares that generic humanity is 
in the divine image, not physically, but spiritually. 

Revelation and discovery, though not identical, are 
closely related terms, and are just as near of kin in 
their application to moral as to astronomical chemical 
or any other special set of scientific experiences 

A star in the heavens has been revolving in its own 
particular orbit for uncounted millenia of time, contrib- 
uting its special quota of light and beauty to the uni- 
verse, but not until it was discovered by an astronomer 
on earth was its existence revealed to the people on 
this planet., * 

God is compared to the great Central Sun of the 
Universe shedding rays of love" and wisdom, to which 
solar heat and light according to Swedenborg and other 
illumined seers and sages directly correspond. There- 
tore as an analogy it is not presumptuous to institute 
me following comparison: Certain prepared condi- 
tions and instruments for observation are necessary to 
the science of astronomy; not only must there be a 
w r ' g f e £ f ° ld astrol °gers and astronomers were 
termed, but telescopes and spectroscopes as well as 
observatories are necessary to the prosecution of re- 
searches amid the glories of the stellar universe. Physi- 
cally considered God is unknowable, also to the Sere 

ntl^lff Wh -° Sed S *? find De '^ in suchVSS 
Plasm as the eminent Professor Tyndall discovered in 
the common nettle, or some other simple inmate of the 



12 



vegetable world, but knowable indeed to all who are 
properly included in the list of those who, because 
pure in heart, see God with the eye of spiritual dis- 
cernment. 

Moses was one who did precisely what conscience or 
moral sense dictated, and kept on following the dic- 
tates of his highest self regardless of all external con- 
sequences. Many of the members of the oppressed 
race he determined to emancipate were so sunken in 
slavery that they felt no gratitude toward their heroic 
champion, but their thankless attitude toward him did 
not release him or cause him to seek release from a 
single iota of the tremendous burden of moral respon- 
sibility which rested on him; therefore, amid execra- 
tions, as well as amid blessings, he went forward to 
his herculean task, and worked wonder after wonder 
through the agency of divinely given power which 
illustrated clearly for all time the exact place of the 
real line of demarkation between white magic (leu- 
comancy) and black magic (necromancy). 

Pharaoh's court magicians were doubtless something 
more than vulgar charlatans or insincere pretenders to 
magical attainments. Genuine soothsayers and mighty 
occultists they may have been, but as the Egypt of their 
day had sunk into the foulest degradation and every 
sort of immorality accompanied the prevailing celebra- 
tion of popular religious rites, these time-serving magi- 
cians were Inversive Magi, or, as they are often called 
in treatises on Occultism, "Brethren of the Shadow." 

On the banks of the Nile, during that exciting tour 
de force between these Egyptian soothsayers and Moses 
and Aaron, the book of Exodus shows us the full 
limit of the power possessed by the unscrupulous or 
black magician. Serpents can be converted into rods 
and rods changed into serpents ; water can be vitiated 
and its appearance made to resemble blood; locusts, 
flies, lice, frogs and all manner of elementary forms of 
life can be conjured up and caused to infest the land, 
not sparing even the King in his private chamber; 
boils can be brought forth on the bodies of men and 
cattle, both by Moses and Aaron and by Pharaoh's 
hired workers of spells and dealers in enchantments. 
The clear , distinction between white magic and black is 
discovered at the point where some deed of benefi- 
cence is called for. Can you heal the stricken populace 
or can you relieve the sufferings of afflicted animals? 
Pharaoh's magicians are compelled to answer, No. But 
when Moses and Aaron are appealed to they can dem- 
onstrate their divine gift as healers of all who are 
afflicted. 



13 



Not a single sacred animal dedicated to the gods 
i J T^ ypt C0llld r escape the P la gues which visited the 
land because of the ungodliness and uncleanliness of 
the people and their rulers ; not a priest of Osiris or 
or Isis was exempt from a share in the wholesale 
calamity which befell the entire Egyptian nation; but 
the Children of Israel had light in their dwellings, 
health m their bodies and safety in their homes despite 
me wide surrounding desolation. 

However much or however little credence should 
placed m the letter of this narrative, as describing the 
actual state of affairs in the Nile country a few thou- 
sand years ago the obvious spiritual interpretation is 
as iollows: Circumstances are not our masters if 
we have grown superior to their influence over us 
We are, however, their submissive servants so long- as 
we remain m the figurative "Egyptian" state of moral 
darkness, swayed by animal appetites and governed bv 
desire for earthly honors secured no matter how 

During one of our lecture courses in California some 
years ago, a young man of some prominence in social 
and business circles, desired us to give our next lecture 
on a subject of his proposing, and as his request was 
readily complied with he stood up and said in sten- 
torian tones greatly to the amusement of a large ma- 
\TaJl>> list eners, "No Hies on the children of 

Laughter, applause and a few hisses greeted the an- 
nouncement of so unusual a subject for discourse, but 
to the lecturer the suggestion proved a decidedly wel- 
for ie i° n !K- nd nevei \ had w e any better opportunity 
for elucidating our deep-rooted convictions on much 
that pertains alike to metaphysics and to Occultism 
Our friends can readily believe that no attempt was 
made by us to extol one race of people at the expense 
of others, nor to unduly enforce doubtful history based 
on a literal rendering of a section of the Pentateuch 
Proceeding without delay to the heart of the theme 
suggested, we sought to explain how in the esoteric 
sense Egyptians and Israelites signify two classes of 
people, both living m the world today as truly as in 
any by-gone period; the former being the sense-bound 
devotees of prevailing servitude, while the latter are 
all who are awakening to a vital realization of their 
divine origin, nature and possibilities 

1 he literal Jewish problem is not an altogether un- 
interesting or unimportant one, as the remarkable 
vitality, intelligence and longevity displayed by ortho- 
dox Israelites, even when confined in wretched ghettos 
or exposed to the rampant fires of reasonless plrsecu- 



14 



tion, can always furnish Israel Zangwill or any other 
brilliant descriptive writer with ample material not 
only for single books, but for entire libraries of in- 
structive and entertaining literature. If it be true, as 
rumor hath it, that the ultra-reformed modern Jew 
is falling a prey to consumption, and other Gentile 
maladies, due not to civilization, but to artificialization, 
all we have to say is that there are two palpable causes 
for this regrettable fact: First, the dietary or physio- 
logical reason which we commend to the consideration 
of all health students and hygienists in general. Second 
(the far more important one from every mataphysical 
standpoint), unwillingness to remain singular or pecu- 
liar from fear of social and other outward consequences. 
An old tradition tells us that when the Ten Command- 
ments, engraven upon the two tablets of stone, were 
found lying on the side of Mt. Sinai, the various 
nations of the earth went up to the tablets in turn and 
each nation, after having scrutinized their contents, 
turned away, refusing to lift them, for they were very 
heavy and their precepts most difficult to obey. When 
Israel came and inspected them, Israel, unlike the other 
nations, took them up and carried them away, thereby 
assuming voluntarily 'The yoke of the Torah." Though 
such a rational fable cannot be said to follow closely 
the text of the Pentateuch, it throws a strong side- 
light upon vastly more than merely a wondrously 
eventful national and religious history, for it tells 
us that if any of us are in possession of more than 
an ordinary measure of truth it is not because of divine 
favoritism, but by reason of our voluntary assumption 
of moral responsibilities, or on account of our having 
in some way qualified ourselves to take a leading posi- 
tion among others as an elect people who are styled 
"the light of the world," "the salt of the earth," and 
known by many other exalted designations. 

Among modern poets no one has expressed the high- 
est idea of divine revelation as universal rather than 
tribal or sectional, more fully than Samuel Longfellow, 
a brother of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who is 
well regarded as among the chief of modern bards. 
What can be more expressive of the true idea of world- 
wide illumination, than the exquisite lines of one of 
Samuel Longfellow's choicest hymns: 

"That which came to ancient sages, 
Greek, Barbarian, Roman, Jew, 
Written in the heart's deep pages, 
Shines today forever new." 

Imperfect though this discourse must be (if any 
regard it as an ambitious attempt to explain so mighty 



15 



a subject as revelation in its innumerable aspects) con- 
sidering that the author's object is to provoke further 
thought far more than to settle elaborate controversies 
it may not be amiss to call attention to a few leading 
ieatures of a rational theory of revelation in general 
before passing on to a seriatim review of the Ten Com' 
maiidments, which we propose to consider in the next 
io lectures without any restrictive reference to their 
supposed miraculous or supernatural origin, regarding 
them as monitors for today rather than as relics of a 
time long since departed. 

(1) Revelation and discovery are synchronous terms 
and can not be logically separated when we are engaged 
m any review of human experiences. ~ " 

(2) Revelation is not arbitrarily bestowed upon cer- 
tain chosen people at favored intervals, but comes any- 
where at any time to all who are in a receptive attitude 
of heart or will, and of intellect or understanding. 

(3) The foregoing propositions being accepted it 
necessarily follows that all chronological and Geo- 
graphical elements can be entirely eliminated from a 
practical, helpful study of continuous revelation so 
that we can profitably and consistently employ text 
books which throw light on conditions favorable to a 
reception of revelation, unmindful of their geographical 
or distinctively historical elements. 

(4) Prophets are for today, as for yesterday. Proph- 
ecy has far more to do with exhortations to right- 
eous hvmg than with satisfying the curiosity of any 
who seek to peer into veiled futurity. 

With these considerations borne clearly in mind it 
will not be difficult to remove our thoughts 
very largely, if not entirely, from the vantage 
ground > 01 past history, and turn from 
the vanished past to the immediate present. 
Pentecostal outpourings of the Spirit of Truth 
are just as possible now as in centuries long since fled* 
but, now as then, we must gather in one spirit with 
one accord, whether we assemble in a literal city called 
Jerusalem or anywhere else. The present Zionist 
Movement, which is attracting great attention, not alone 
in Jewish circles where the interest naturally chiefly 
centers, is one of those problematical undertakings 
which serve to keep alive traditions of the past and 
at^the same time minister to the yearnings of the pres- 

There are millions of Jews today who fervently pray 
that restored Israel may become consolidated in a great 
prosperous nation dwelling in literal Palestine, but there 
are other millions of Jews who have no desire what- 



i6 

ever to leave lands of birth or adoption in Europe, 
America, South Africa or Australia, where they are 
citizens in full exercise of every right of citizenship. 

Let those who wish to go to Asia Minor flock thither 
and re-colonize a wonderful historic spot of earth, but 
Jerusalem and Zion, like Horeb and Sinai, for all 
peoples signify spiritual states, not geographical local- 
ities. 

The true fulfillment of all glowing prophecies con- 
cerning a new Jerusalem must be spiritual before it 
can be literal, but a new heaven, which is man's interior 
condition renewed, may be finally ultimated in a new 
earth or exterior condition in which peace will reign 
absolutely triumphant. 



LECTURE TWO. 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 
"Thou shalt have no other God than the Eternal." 

Knowing that there are various translations of the 
First Commandment, and knowing also that there is 
ample room for discussion as~ to which translation of 
the original most closely conforms to the spirit of the 
Hebrew text, we shall not attempt to quibble over 
various readings and perplex our fellow-students with 
needless discussion of higher and lower or broader and 
narrower views of Deity entertained by people in remote 
times, or to improve the Ten Words which are said 
to have been miraculously given. Having for oUr im- 
mediate object a simple, practical elucidation of the 
spirit, rather than of the letter, of the first of these 
Ten Commandments, we need simply to remark that 
whenever we seek to convey the thought of absolute 
Deity we shall use the term or title Eternal One, but 
whenever we are dealing with tutelary spirits, minis- 
tering angels, and all local and limited conceptions of 
divinity, we shall adhere to the conventional usage of 
the terms God and Lord as we find them employed 
throughout all sacred scriptures. 

The ninety-fifth Psalm is an example of this usage, 
"The Eternal One is a great King above all Gods." 
This is a clear, definite sentence, while a frequently 
employed translation, "The Lord is a great King above 
all Gods," is somewhat ambiguous. The Hebrew word 
Adonai almost invariably rendered "the Lord" in Eng- 
lish, is a substituted word, as no orthodox Israelite 



17 

will pronounce the name Jahveh or Jehovah when 
reading from the scrolls of the Law. El-Shadai, mean- 
ing the Almighty, is a term in frequent use, but the 
real name of the Supreme Being, according to orthodox 
Jewish tradition, is not to be pronounced on earth until 
Messiah comes and speaks it. 

Israel Zangwill, whose stories are all replete with 
™l ton £, al information, says in one of his shorter novels 
the Turkish Messiah," that only a very few hundred 
years ago in Europe there arose a supposed Messiah 
who eventually became a convert to Mohammedanism, 
and who, during his earlier days long before his apos- 
tacy from the Jewish faith, impressively spoke the 
Divine Name, the awful Tetragrammaton of the 
Kabalan, but no result or phenomenon followed 
babbatais utterance of the great and awful Name 
because he was not the true Messiah. 

Innumerable superstitions and countless legends 
cluster around the Unpronouncable Name, among the 
very commonest of which is the altogether superficial 
statement that the tutelar divinity of the Hebrew clan 
the God of the mountains, refused to give his name to 
the specially privileged or singularly endowed sensitives 
among the ancient Israelites with whom he frequentlv 
communicated. 

We shall not endeavor to refute those external 
scholars, whose exegetical methods are purely exoteric 
and who therefore see nothing below the most external 
surface of a spiritual revelation, for on the plane upon 
which they examine the Pentateuch they are certainly 
measurably correct. Our aim is not to rehash or 
revamp old stories of tutelary guardians of Israelitish 
and other clans, but to delve as deeply as possible into 
the wealthly mine of precious spiritual ore, the entrance 
to which can be found in the biblical, tradition concern- 
ing the giving of the Law from Sinai. As it is not 
certain that Sinai was ever a volcano, the account of 
its marve ous eruption can be understood far better 
allegoncally than literally. The fire, smoke, lightning, 
thunder, earthquake and trumpet-blasts are all to be 
considered correspondently, if the story as revealed in 
the group of chapters which circle around the twentieth 
chapter of Exodus is to be applied to the living present 
Moses we regard as typical of all men and women every- 
where who are found loyal and conscientious beyond 
all ordinary wont. No beast can be permitted to touch 
the mountain, for it will die immediately it sets foot 
fnr°» b ^ rm ?g elation. This needs no translation 
for a student of the Mysteries, as every tyro in Occult- 
ism knows that what is signified thereby is, that every 



i8 



animal propensity must have been fully subdued and 
held completely in submission to the operating will of 
the indwelling spirit, before the neophyte can possibly 
end his novitiate and take it upon himself to encounter 
the sublime and terrible ordeal which ever awaits the 
incipient hierophant. 

Moses must go alone through smoke and cloud; he 
must brave the darkness and be strong to hear the 
solemn voice which speaks after the commotion of ele- 
ments has subsided, a voice that waxes stronger and 
louder with every fresh step the ascending hero takes 
on his way to the summit of Mt. Sinai. 

We do not presume to say how much or how little 
modern Free Masons understand of this glowing im- 
agery, all of which is exhibited in the various lodges 
during solmen rites of literal initiation, but whether 
exalted members of exoteric Masonic fraternities are 
familiar with inner meanings or not, we are not afraid 
to announce that there are genuine Gnostics and Her- 
metists upon earth today who know whereof they 
speak when they declare that there is a key extant, 
which mav have been long concealed, but never lost, by 
use of which the soul of the Torah is found reposing 
in its body. 

Whenever the officiating minister m a synagogue 
uncovers the sacred scroll and holds it up in sight of 
the assembled congregation, he symbolizes, if he follows 
the full prescriptions of an orthodox ritual, precisely 
what esoteric teachers explain concerning the divine 
law within the outer covering of extraneous legislation. 

Every listener can hear the sound of the reader's 
voice, every reader can pronounce the words 
which front his eyes, and every scroll-maker 
can mark the characters correctly on prepared 
parchment, but only those who hear and see 
beneath the literal garb have any true or 
ideal conception of what the story means which recounts 
the awe-inspiring experiences of Moses as he ascended 
smoking, trembling Sinai, and received two tables of 
stone from heaven at the hands of God's angelic mes- 
sengers 

Doubtless there are multitudes all over the world to- 
day who do sincerely worship not simply an anthro- 
pomorphic but an exclusively patriotic or tribal divinity. 
To many people Israel's God is the God of Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, but of no one 
else. Such a conception may be spiritualistic and need 
not be untrue in limited measure, but it falls immeasur- 
ably short of that exalted universal monotheism which 
does not deny the facts of polytheism whenever a 



19 



polytheistic system can find facts to support it— but in 
its impressive grandeur and unique magnificence alone 
amid all systems of theology and philosophy, calls upon 
humanity the world over, to acknowledge one only God 
as Creator and Preserver of the entire human family. 

Many people speak of the "beautiful sentiment" of 
universal brotherhood and sisterhood, but they put all 
imaginable intellectual obstacles in the way of its out- 
ward realization. Among the commonest objections to 
this sublimely ideal conception of human solidarity, we 
find a contracted ethnology on the one hand, and an 
equally contracted theology on the other. Far be it 
from our intent to seek to foist upon thinkers in this 
twentieth century, the utterly unhistoric doctrine that 
all Jews, three thousand or more years ago, had arrived 
at the sublimest conceivable view of Deity, and that 
every man, woman and child among them entertained 
the idea of a Supreme Spirit absolutely impartial and 
entirely universal to whom they gave the name of 
"God of Israel," for such was certainly not the case. 

The partially enlightened Hebrew race, which the 
Jewish religion gradually civilized, had reached no such 
high pinnacle of ethical or intellectual attainment, and 
to ninety-nine out of every average hundred of the 
members of that race, the Jewish God was, no doubt, 
a being more or less incomprehensible, who watched 
over the destinies of a "Chosen People," and fought 
for them against their literal enemies whenever they 
went forth to battle. But we need not go back three 
thousand years to find such narrow-minded Jews or 
similarly narrow-minded Christians, for recent events 
have abundantly proved that so blind are many vaunt- 
ing American and English patriots, that to them the 
words of Decatur, the American general, who said on a 
memorable occasion in 1816, "My country, right or 
wrong, always my country," express the highest possi- 
ble ideal of genuine patriotic sentiment. How much 
nobler, however, are the words of a wiser general: 
"My country, right or wrong; if she is right, may I 
work to keep her right, but if she is wrong, may I use 
my best endeavors to set her right." 

On the foundation of the foregoing for a text, Rev. 
Samuel Richard Fuller of Boston, a singularly powerful 
independent preacher, lectured at Greenacre, a charm- 
ing resort m Maine, July 4, 1899. On that occasion 
a seven-colored Peace Flag was presented to Miss 
Sarah J. Farmer, the beloved president of the Green- 
acre Conferences. In these conferences people of all 
shades of opinion have, year by year since their inau- 
guration in 1894, taken increasing interest and found 



on 

increasing benefit by working together despite differ- 
ences of view regarding many things, for the end of 
universal peace. 

"Have we not all one Father; hath not one God 
created us all?" was the text or motto of the World's 
Parliament of Religions held in Chicago during Septem- 
ber, 1893. It is worthy of remembrance that this quo- 
tation from one of the Hebrew prophets was suggested 
by Chief Rabbi Adler of Great Britain, and accepted 
by the Parliament Committee in preference to all others 
presented. It will never do to confound the highest, 
deepest, purest, wisest, and most far-reaching teachings 
of ancient seers and sages with the petty constructions 
put upon them by merely average intellects. We do 
ourselves a great injustice as well as proving unfair to 
our forefathers, if we persist in reading out of ancient 
Scriptures only the shallowest meanings which super- 
ficial thought can gather. Take an artistic illustration: 
some great painter, sculptor, poet or musician who lived 
in the long ago, has bequeathed to posterity a priceless 
gem of art. The ordinary hearer or observer hears or 
perceives only the most external elements of this mas- 
terpiece of painting, statuary or musical composition, 
and to him the master's chef d' oeuvre means no more 
than some ordinary sketch or concert-hall ballad. 

Shall we say that because the common eye sees only 
the surface of the canvas and the common ear hears 
only a strange combination of musical notes, _ that 
therefore the great artist or composer had no higher 
conception of the product of his inspired genius than 
the little the average amusement-seeker attributes to 
him? 

Myriads of literary and art treasures are now being 
discovered and exhumed, and among the very oldest 
we find some which compare most favorably with many 
of the grandest productions of today. In their 
fierce recoil from blind idolatry of the past 
and foolish unscholarly bibliolatry, iconoclastic 
reformers have failed to appreciate the many 
priceless gems of truth and to discover those 
profound depths of hidden meaning which our 
much glorified and also greatly execrated Hebrew Bible 
contains ; but when we note how strong is the influence 
for good exerted everywhere by its many noble passages, 
we should have neither right nor reason on our side 
did we attempt to demolish what only needs to be 
more fully revealed that it may be vitally appreciated. 

Dr. Joseph Parker, author of "The People's Bible," 
a commentary in twenty-five volumes, often said during 
the course of his thirty years' ministry in the City 



21 



Temple, London, "We do not want a new book, but 
we do require new readers," to which we can heartily 
respond Amen. The new readers, if they are true and 
profitable ones, must be able to look through the out- 
ward dress of an accepted literal revelation and discern 
its interior strength and beauty.. Swedenborgians thor- 
oughly believe m two interior senses below or within 
the natural sense, which they call the spiritual and the 
celestial senses, and were these good people freer than 
most of them appear to be to traverse other fields than 
the beaten track of Swedenborg's somewhat arbitrary 
definition of correspondences, they could soon lead the 
religious world m a very profitable direction; but some 
of them are sadly handicapped because of their own far 
ihumfnaHons 611 ' nng ° f singularl y gifted Oder's 

No writer of ancient or modern date has surpassed 
Swedenborg in philosophic depth or transcendental 
grandeur, but the extreme devotion paid by his avowed 
followers to the literal text of his theological writings 
has been a decided set-back to the benign influence his 
entire philosophy is capable of exercising in the world 
Cjod as Supreme Life, Infinite Love and Wisdom,' 
comparable only to a glorious Central Sun, and re- 
vealed as Man in Man's inmost essence, is the ancient 
universal teaching of the Illuminati who are always in 
the world and ever ready to instruct all who are willing 
to become faithful, earnest learners in the school of 
esoteric knowledge, which is essentially a school that 
tw fi! 0 graduate its disciples as quickly as possible, 
m I they , may leave the sheltering arms of the Alma 
Mater who protected their spiritual infancy, and go 
forth reliant upon the divine life within them, to 
establish new and ever-widening Schools of the 
Prophets, in which genuine training shall be afforded all 
earnest aspirants to a spiritual ministry, entirely at 
variance with the prescribed scholastic routine to which 
all conventional priests and rabbis are subjected It 
is truly a long spiritual journey from the ritualistic 
worship prevalent in today's "Egypt" to the sublime 
spiritual service of the universal Oversoul who is also 
the Indwelling Spirit, a worship which marks the free 
Ta T h ° - haS ? as ? ed throu gh the wilderness of 
protracted transitional journey ings and reached the 
Canaan of the soul the land flowing with measureless 
supplies of celestial "milk and honey" 

There is but one way in which a divine revelation 
can be tested and perfectly separated from the tare or 
cockle which grows in the same field with the wheat 
until the harvest hour of elimination comes 



22 



All man-made systems are ambitious, prelatical, 
limited, in all ways calculated to unduly exalt some 
personality, and consequently to consign other per- 
sonalities equally worthy, well nigh to oblivion. 

Let us pass in rapid review some of the present pop- 
ular systems of thought which are accounted "Ad- 
vanced," "Liberal," "Progressive," or "New," and see 
to what a sad extent they are honeycombed with the 
most ancient error of personal idolatry. Christian 
Science during the past twenty years has made amazing 
progress. Churches of Christ (Scientist) are every- 
where increasing in membership and influence, and 
despite the attacks made upon this cult from every side, 
the young giant waxes ever stronger and more prosper- 
ous. With its first breath Christian Science pronounces 
man the free-born child of God, but with the next the 
formulated system binds him in old timeworn shackles, 
limiting officiating ministers to the recitation of stereo- 
typed sermons, and setting up a book, "Science and 
Health, with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary B. G. 
Eddy, as an infallible rule of faith and practice. "All 
is good; there is no evil," is the fundamental sentence 
at the root of Christian Science doctrine, yet malicious 
mesmerism and animal magnetism are feared with 
slavish terror by many who are loudly proclaiming that 
truth has set them free. There is much of truth in 
Christian Science, but the entire system is by no means 
wholly true. It behooves us, therefore, to discriminate 
intelligently between the truth which it contains and 
the error with which that truth is mixed. The error 
springs from failure to trust altogther in omnipotence; 
half-way confidence in Deity will never emancipate 
either an individual or a race from bondage. 

Theosophy is another modern candidate for world- 
wide recognition, and not only its name but its claim 
is truly inspiring; but just as Christian Scientists have 
idolized Mrs.. Eddy, so have Theosophists slavishly 
bowed to the dictum, not only of Mme. Blavatsky, but 
of other leaders also, and greatly to the detriment of the 
Theosophical movement at large. People cannot con- 
sistently call upon humanity to subscribe to universal 
fraternity, and then drift into exclusive Aryanism, nor 
can they save people from the dangers accruing from 
misdirected psychic power by fulminating against hyp- 
notism, and sometimes even condemning all phases of 
mental healing on the ground that it is wrong to inter- 
fere with Karma. 

Spiritualism is in many respects the most inclusive of 
all the modern movements, and more and more is the 
scientific world coming to accept its fundamental claim, 



23 



but Spiritualists, unsatisfied with legitimate spiritual 
intercommunication, have insisted upon "spirit control," 
and consequently have had to reckon with the terror of 
"obsession." All these weaknesses and causes of strife 
and unreason~Take their rise in disobedience to the 
first commandment, "Thou shalt have no God except 
the Eternal," and this has been most clearly seen by all 
the greatest ethical teachers the world has ever known. 
Though God is absolutely universal, there is a deep 
sense in which the words of an ancient psalmist, "O 
God thou art my God," are absolutely true. God, 
though so far beyond all description that every at- 
tempted definition is a vulgar impertinence, must be 
realized by each human individual as personal to that 
individual. 

We cannot fail to be impressed with a peculiar trick 
of English speech, which serves to exactly illustrate our 
finding or our non-discovery of God in the universe. 
How will you accent the following sentence or how will 
you punctuate the written phrase? God is now here. 
You would not alter one letter to make it read, God is 
nowhere. There was a story afloat many years ago 
that an atheist wrote this sentence on a blackboard and 
asked his little son to read it. The child read, God is 
now here. The father intended that it should spell, 
God is nowhere, but the simple wisdom of the child 
refuted all his endeavors to inculcate atheism. It may 
be the better of the two to believe in no God at all, — 
than to so pervert the thought of God that one might 
well wish he could live in a Godless universe; but we 
are forced to no such bitter alternative. Optimism and 
Pessimism are rival candidates for the people's vote to- 
day. Which will you vote for, that inspiring Optimism 
which finds good in everything, or that depressing 
Pessimism which finds evil in everything? Choose ye 
this day whom ye will serve; there can be no further 
dalliance, no longer a halting between two opinions. 
"Worship Adonai or worship Baal," said Elijah to the 
populace of old, and we face today's Carmel even as 
we front today's Sinai. It is always on a mountain 
peak that a great revelation is announced to the people. 
Wonders are not performed in valleys, only on high 
eminences can we catch glimpses of the Infinite. 

The God who answers by fire is the true God today 
as in all time past. Fire always purifies and enlightens. 
Does your God-idea enlighten, not only you but the 
world around you? Are you stronger, braver, purer, 
wiser and happier because of your faith? If you are 
not, you are a worshipper of Baal or Baal's successor, 
Mammon, no matter how loudly you may with the 



24 



lips profess your faith in the one only true God who is 
Spirit, and who can be worshiped only in spirit and 
in truth. 

We most of us love only Moriah or we love only 
Gerizim; we are small Jews or small Samaritans, petty 
patriots, not large cosmopolites ; therefore we are con- 
tinually looking to externals for what can only be found 
within ourselves. If you are a worshiper on Mt. 
Gerizim, and nowhere else, you and your Samaritan 
confreres will soon find that your beloved temple will 
fall into ruins and leave you templeless, or you will 
be forced to wander into a distant land and God will 
be left behind, for you, on the hill of your idolatry, so 
you will feel as far from God as you are far from 
home, altar, shrine, or sanctuary. If you are an exclu- 
sive worshiper on Mt. Moriah you may live to see a 
third temple vanish as two temples disappeared before 
it. How often do we miss all sense of close intercom- 
munion with the divine, because we in our ignorance 
clutch frantically at some external shrine or object, 
which, to us embodies all we can as yet conceive of 
Deity. 

Whatever may be the literal history of ancient Israel, 
or however little Jews in general may have realized the 
one Eternal Being immeasurably beyond the highest 
possible ideal of a tribal divinity, we may well be 
assured that the chief among the prophets everywhere 
have pointed humanity away from a localized limited 
God without, to the intimately near God within. No 
intelligent reader, much less any profound student of 
the Bible in its entirety, can imagine for an instant that 
all the various conceptions of Deity to be found on the 
pages of its many composite manuscripts are but vari- 
ants of one identical view. Still underlying all smaller 
views there runs the basic thought of a single Supreme 
Intelligence whose unity is incomparable, and this view 
is sustained instead of weakened when we seek to trace 
the roots of the Hebraic or Mosaic idea of God to 
Egypt where, notwithstanding the extreme complexity 
of the popular prevailing polytheism, a rigid monotheis- 
tic God-idea was fundamentally established. 

The Egyptian "Book of the Dead" contains a long 
list of minor divinities, and gives a graphic account of 
the many living creatures of all sorts which the people 
venerated because they believed them to be in some 
mysterious manner participants in divine sanctity, but 
there is absolutely nothing in that strange compendium 
of old Egyptian beliefs and practices which militates 
against the theory, now put forward by all the wisest 
among Egyptologists, that the Egyptians of many thou- 



25 



Sand years ago conceived of one supreme Deity in- 
finitely above" all lesser divinities, and unapproachable 
save through purification of the human heart and mind. 
If the Exodus story be accepted in any degree literally, 
its historic elements connect the giving of the Sinaitic 
Law with a people recently emancipated from servitude 
in Egypt, through the agency of a mighty hero, a race 
deliverer, who had been educated in Egypt at Pharaoh's 
court and remained in that land until he had completed 
his eightieth year of age. 

The first of the Ten Commandments may, then, be 
reasonably understood literally to be in the nature of 
a call to the Israelites to forego all the idolatrous 
practices of the Egyptians and cling with fervor and 
sole devotion to all that was truly essential and abso- 
lutely noble in their former faith ; at the same time they 
were being counseled to go higher than they had gone 
hitherto, for yet more stringent rules of morality were 
enunciated for their guidance than had been revealed 
to them in all their previous experiences. 

The trumpet call from Sinai's height, the special 
message of the sounding shofar or ram's horn trumpet 
was, "Hear, O Israel, the Eternal thy God, the Eternal 
is one;" and "Thou shalt love the Eternal with all thy 
heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind and with all 
thy strength." How significant is the poet-author's 
statement that the divine voice waxed continually louder 
and louder, and that only Moses could ascend the moun- 
tain and commune with Deity face to face. Leaving 
all literal aspects of the imposing scene and departing 
from the pathways of history and tradition, we may 
profitably ask for the key to the inner significance of 
the still sounding command, "Worship the Eternal, thy 
God, Him only shalt thou serve." Nothing can be more 
self-evident 'than that with the avalanchine advance of 
modern liberal religious thought, old opinions concern- 
nig God and revelation have been mightily shaken, and 
it is equally self-evident that the present epoch is one 
of unrest, doubtful expectancy and many other tran- 
sitory elements combined. ? 

We cannot go back, we must go forward. The 
common idea of God entertained by the credulous fifty 
or more years ago cannot be reinstated in human con- 
sciousness, and it is well for us all that it cannot be. 
A very urgent enquiry presses itself upon us from every 
side ; are we compelled to give up all that was excellent, 
comforting and inspiring in our forefathers' idea of 
Deity, because we cannot accept the result of morbid 
theological controversies and swallow the contents of 
creeds, catechisms and confessions which were formu- 



26 



lated in obedience to the will of a tyrannical majority, 
but never voiced the faith of a more spiritually minded 
minority, whose voice was silenced by the clamor of 
the verbally victorious party in those ecclesiastical 
council chambers, where worldly force, rather than 
spiritual insight, gained the day? 

Consider the sage utterances of such great philoso- 
phers as Moses Maimonides, who in Europe during the 
twelfth century expressed himself concerning Deity in 
the following words : "God is one, but there is no unity 
like unto the divine Unity." "God is pure Spirit and 
hath no form whatsoever." Such utterances have long 
been regarded as strictly orthodox among Jews of the 
most conservative school, and they are certainly not 
at variance with the pure Theism of Fiske and many 
other modern writers, who simply tell us that it is all in 
vain to seek to scan the Infinite. A wise writer has 
given us the line, "God defined is God dethroned." 
Nothing can be truer than the above saying, the truth- 
fulness of which impresses us with renewed conviction 
whenever we are called upon to pass an opinion 
upon alleged modern revelations, some of 
which may tell us that people go into trances, 
travel through seven circles of light and th|en 
reach the very centre of the universe and stand 
locally in the presence of God. There are two 
explanations of such claims. First, a vision has been 
mistaken for an actual geographical experience. Sec- 
ond, some sensitive person has seen an angel and im- 
agined that personal spirit of bright and glorious pres- 
ence to be the absolute ineffable Deity whom no man 
can possibly behold in any such external manner. The 
simple ethical import of the First Commandment can 
well be taken to signify that devotion to the sense of 
right within is the paramount obligation resting upon 
us all, and because much dispute hovers about this 
proposition we will proceed to analyze it. 

It is frequently contended that the individual human 
being cannot be trusted to discover truth for himself, 
therefore the need of a hierarchy whose infallible dicta 
must be unquestionably accepted as the supreme rule 
of faith and conduct. History has proved so conclu- 
sively that all hierarchies have been at times corrupt 
and false, that no fair-minded student of ecclesiastical 
history can possibly accept the hierarchical claim as well 
founded. On the other side of the controversy the case 
is widely different, for instead of intuition or inner 
light being disregarded by the most enlightened among 
experimental psychologists, it is now being almost uni- 
versally conceded that there is a light within every 



27 



human being endowing each with an adequate though 
not infinite conception of right or justice. Dr. George 
Dutton, author of an admirable treatise on Anatomy 
and many other valuable educational books, has thrown 
volumes of ethical teaching into a sentence of only 
six words: "Justice satisfies everybody; injustice sat- 
isfies nobody." If we take away the latter three we 
shall find in the three former words alone an all-suffi- 
cient basis for every sort of moral educationary work. 
Does justice satisfy everybody? some will ask. Yes, 
it does, we uncompromisingly reply. Let the sociolo- 
gist or political economist travel far and wide in search 
of a solution of the many complex social and industrial 
problems now confronting everybody, and he will jour- 
ney in vain until he dares to announce to the world 
the great discovery made in every age by every genius, 
seer or prophet, that all that children ask is justice, 
and adults are only grown-up children who clamor for 
the same. It is always a debatable question how far 
we are justified in releasing all restraints and letting 
children do exactly as they please; but we are forced 
at length to meet the issue between worshiping God 
and honoring one's parents. 

The new methods in education — and in these we cer- 
tainly include the fundamental thought of the Swiss 
Pestalozzi and the German Froebel — are all based upon 
the right of a child to live an individual life and grow 
as flowers grow in a garden; hence the now very pop- 
ular term Kindergarten (children's garden). Does the 
First Commandment enjoin upon us these modern views 
of education? It certainly does, and we cannot obey 
it ourselves unless we are ready to assist others in their 
attempts to obey it. Truth must be confessed, _ even 
though the confession is often for the time humiliating 
and therefore unpalatable, and the particular truth we 
need to confess today is each child's right to individual 
liberty, which has been so long denied that it seems 
like anarchy to advocate, in some quarters, obedience 
to an inborn divine order in place of cringing submis- 
sion to a tyrannical man-made law. 

The First Commandment teaches us to do what is 
right, because it is right ; in place of do as others tell 
you because they command you. The Decalogue is so 
searching, it probes so deeply into the very depths of 
human nature, and is so revolutionary in its effect 
upon conduct wherever it is obeyed, that multitudes 
today exceedingly fear and quake when they hear the 
Ten Words re-delivered from the living Sinai, the 
mount of God within the very nature of humanity. 



28 



How strangely inconsistent we are if on the one 
hand we glorify those heroic martyrs who submitted to 
the crudest persecution rather than effect compromises 
with conviction, and on the other hand highly extol 
those very institutionalized practices in opposition to 
which these same witnesses for truth resisted even 
unto death. "Let my people go free that they may serve 
me, and "Where the spirit of the Lord is there is 
liberty " are two perfectly agreeing texts, one from the 
Old, the other from the New Testament, which we 
specially commend to all who are engaged in a study 
of the essence of the First Commandment. Do we 
appeal, as we should, to the innate sense of right in the 
youngest members of our families, and do we enter 
the secret chambers of our own being often enough 
with the words in our hearts, "Lord what wilt Thou 
have me to do? " How frequently we hear the futile 
words, "I'll punish you." Probably you will, cogitates 
the intending transgressor, if you catch me; but, he 
continues, still parleying with himself, you'll not catch 
me, therefore I shall go unpunished. Sinai's voice 
peals m the ears of every human being whenever con- 
science retorts ; but though no man sees you God is all 
observant and God's ways are not like man's ways 
God's penalties are not ulterior, but interior. God 
does not catch the thief by means of a police and 
detective service. God does not incarcerate malefactors 
m dungeons, bind them in chains, and eventually if 
they prove incorrigible, hand them over to the execu- 
tioner. 

God works in man through the law of his own nature ; 
therefore all divine rewards and punishments are abso- 
lutely inevitable. Here appears the solemnity of the 
entire situation : no one can escape the interior elevation 
which follows obedience, and none .can escape the 
equally interior and unavoidable deterioration conse- 
quent upon disobedience to divine law. We are not 
called upon to take a look at two literal tables of ex- 
terior stone, for the tablets of the Law are within us. 
One stone table is to be found in the seat of our affec- 
tions, the other in the citadel of understanding. The 
Law is written on two tables of stone, not on one table 
only, because through united will and understanding, 
through co-operating emotion and intellect, is human 
life to be rendered harmonious and sublime. 

Let us all accompany Moses into the mountain as 
well as on to it, and then come forth to perfectly obey 
the injunction as it concerns all outward behavior, "See 
thou make all things according to the pattern which 
God gives unto Moses in the mount." 



29 

LECTURE THREE. 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." 

Probably no one of the Ten Commandments has 
excited quite so much controversy as this Second 
Commandment, which not only inveighs against idol- 
atry but introduces the reader to a very decided, though 
often greatly misunderstood, enunciation of the doc- 
trine of sin and its sequence.. 

The first part of the commandment which concerns 
the worship of idols has long been made the subject 
of controversy, not only between Jews and Christians, 
or between Christians and Mohammedans, but between 
Catholics and Protestants, Ritualists and all opposed to 
Ritualism. It would involve the expenditure of need- 
less and unprofitable effort to seek in this place to re- 
traverse the long winding road of acrimonious dispute 
along which controversialists have been treading for 
many a century; it suffices for our immediate purpose 
to consider how far we are reasonably called upon, to 
abstain from image making, and at what point we are 
likely to incur the inevitable penalty which grows out 
of disobedience to a divine precept. 

If the very strictest interpretation of the letter of the 
commandment be insisted upon, we suppose it would 
be necessary to agree with the decision of the ! Grseco- 
Russian Church, that icons or holy pictures are not 
prohibited, but statues which are clearly graven images, 
are prohibited by the Law. 

The Roman Church long ago decided that only the 
worship or adoration of images was forbidden, and 
therefore the Vulgate translation reads: "Thou shalt 
not bow down to them to adore them," which to the 
Jewish mind amounts to almost a falsification of the 
Decalogue, for the Vulgate reading allows people to 
bow down to images but not to worship them, a distinc- 
tion real enough in itself but not very easily compre- 
hended by the illiterate. 

We think it a fair inference that the spirit of this 
Second Commandment has nothing whatever to do 
with the sculptor's art, or with the simple manufacture 
of statuary; it concerns the attitude taken toward ex- 
ternal things in general, rather than in particular. 
There is a passage elsewhere in the Bible, which 
throws much light on this discussion: "Idolatry is 
as the sin of witchcraft." 



30 



The Second Commandment forbids all forms of witch- 
craft, and what are witcheries but results attributed to 
certain material as well as psychic acts which were 
always endeavors to cause distress and to bring injury 
upon people and their belongings. Idolatry in its widest 
sense signifies all inordinate attachment to material 
objects ; all undue regard for merely external things, 
and on this branch of the subject we desire to utter 
some decidedly uncompromising words. 

As the present is an age of renaissance in the fullest 
meaning of the term, for every old and curious practice 
and belief of days gone by is being revived through the 
agency of some one or other of the numerous schools 
of Occultism now extant, we cannot escape confronting 
in a more or less modernized dress, all forms of ancient 
sorcery adapted measurably to the taste and demand 
of these early years of the twentieth century. 

There is immeasurable element of truth in all great 
claims of Mental Scientists and others who insist 
strenuously upon the sovereign potency of human will 
and expectation, and go so far as to declare that pov- 
erty as well as sickness can be charmed away by purely 
mental or psychic activity, when such activity is exerted 
according to law and order. 

There is certainly nothing in the Decalogue to dis- 
suade people from setting to work in all possible legiti- 
mate^ ways to accumulate an earthly fortune, and enjoy 
life in this present (not necessarily evil) world; but 
one of the essential doctrines of the Wisdom-Religion 
of all ages is, that we cannot command material re- 
sources as long as we take a slavish mental attitude 
toward them. No servitude is so galling, no serf is 
so completely enslaved, as whoever makes a god of 
some material idol and falls down in abject worship 
before the mental image of some material thing whose 
outward absence the unhappy idolator continually be- 
moans. 

Before we can cultivate and liberate any psychic 
force sufficiently to attract^ to us the things we need, 
we must be worshippers of God and dominators of 
Mammon in our own consciences. This is a subject 
upon which there is a good deal of hazy speculation, 
and only seldom do we come across a lucid statement 
concerning the mental attitude truly necessary to gov- 
ern external supplies., 

We cannot serve God and Mammon, but we can serve 
God and rule Mammon. The service of God can be 
translated into terms of simple ethics thus: The serv- 
ice of God which is truly described as "perfect free- 
dom," is completely untrammeled obedience to the high- 



31 



est moral conceptions of which we have any conscious- 
ness. We serve God when we are true in all respects 
to whatever we feel to be the right, whether our loyalty 
to conviction wins for us the praise or blame of our 
contemporaries. 

We must always put right before might, spiritual 
possessions before material appurtenances; but while 
this is the order of a well-regulated life it is quite 
unreasonable to assert that it is God's will that we 
should live in destitution, or that we must be resigned 
to circumstances and tamely submissive to untoward 
environments because we imagine that God has ordained 
that such should be our lot. 

A complete revolution is now in progress in theo- 
logical circles, the outcome of which will surely be an 
entire recasting of religious doctrines into the molds of 
modern speech. Our own sympathies are by no means 
wholly with conservatives or entirely with radicals, as 
those titles are commonly employed, because we can 
plainly see that each party is standing out for some 
phases of truth which the other fails to perceive. Con- 
servative language is objectionable to radical ears and 
vice versa, but we must seek to get at an understanding 
of what we are all alike aiming for, and surely the 
object of our united aim is the bettering of human 
conditions in all respects. 

Undue regard for material things leads to an immense 
amount of totally unnecessary crime; therefore it is 
the duty of lovers of humanity to protest vigorously 
against a form of idolatry which in the modern world 
is sapping not only the bodily health, but the moral 
character of nations. Idolatry is not the simple prac- 
tice of venerating consecrated shrines or placing flowers 
and lighted tapers before some much-prized statue, 
though it cannot be denied that there is a danger that 
idolatry may supervene if such practices are indulged 
in an unreasoning manner or to an inordinate degree. 

On that side of the subject it is scarcely necessary 
in these days to do more than exercise rational dis- 
crimination between normal and abnormal causes for 
such devotional practices, and most of all does it be- 
come us to treat Oriental systems of religion, such as 
Buddhism, with the same consideration that many of 
us are accustomed to show to ceremonial phases o£ 
Christianity. 

Nothing can be more irrational than to commend in 
Christendom, practices which we condemn in Heathen- 
dom, and certainly all traveled persons, whether their 
voyages have been only mental or both mental and 
physical, who have kept themselves free from stupid 



32 



prejudice while on their journeyings, have reached the 
decision that there is no more idolatry in setting up an 
image of Buddha than in erecting a shrine in honor 
of any saint in the Christian calendar. 

The power of suggestion now being exhaustively 
dealt with in many periodicals to which leading physi- 
cians and intelligent people of all professions contribute, 
is throwing much new light on the origin and meaning 
of numerous rites which have long appeared barbaric 
and meaningless to professedly cultivated missionaries 
who have gone to Eastern countries to turn from 
"heathen idolatry," people who, in many instances, were 
far more highly educated and quite as moral as them- 
selves. 

The nature of the idea portrayed in the image is a 
matter of considerable consequence; we cannot afford 
to deal lightly with the view taken of the image by the 
worshiper who gazes upon it or bends before it. 

Apologists for religious ceremonialism find their case 
much strengthened by the discoveries of modern 
psychologists, who are paying great attention to the 
value of suggestion.. All that passes under the name 
of "Suggestive Therapeutics" throws light on image 
worship, as it has been vulgarly termed, when viewed 
as an aid to concentration of thought on a definite 
ideal. The modern suggestionist is far too inclusive in 
his appreciation of ceremonial rites to satisfy apologists 
for any particular phase of religion, for they, unfor- 
tunately, seek as a rule to denounce all other systems 
than their own, while the scientific student and prac- 
titioner of experimental psychology embraces all or 
none. It is not necessary to enlarge further upon this 
solitary point, but we should be far from making prac- 
tical application of our theme if we did not use this 
opportunity to insist upon the crying" social need of 
the present hour, which is that we pay sincere deference 
to the spirit of the first two commandments of the 
Decalogue. 

The cause of defalcations of every kind is to be 
found in an utterly vain and foolish idolatry paid to 
material possessions regardless of how they have been 
obtained. In all cases where intelligence has been 
employed in the honest accumulation of material sub- 
stance, the accumulator is entitled to the sincere re- 
spect of the entire community in which he may reside; 
therefore sound teaching is not at variance with the 
views of those who laud the honestly wealthy on the 
score of their superior wisdom. 

No one can dispute the saying, "he is a benefactor 
of the race who causes two blades of grass to grow 



33 



where formerly but one grew," for such a person adds 
to the bulk of communal property and is a friend to 
society at large. There is no rascality involved in hon- 
orable engagement in agricultural and mining indus- 
tries, when those employed in such undertakings are 
rendering the earth more fruitful and bringing out of 
its secret places the treasure it has for ages concealed, 
seeing that no one can be pauperized, but many may be 
enriched thereby. Let it then not be suggested that 
people interested in the spiritual development of human- 
ity are in love with financial destitution, and hold up 
poverty as a sign of piety. Such teaching is utterly 
erroneous and misleading, at the same time it is in- 
tensely necessary to show by example, as well as to 
proclaim by precept, that we do not value people on 
account of what they have, but by reason of what they 
are. 

Edward Bellamy, in his two great novels, "Looking 
Backward", and "Equality," has pointed out with un- 
mistakable clearness that the possession of money 
affords no proof whatever that it has been honestly 
obtained, for stolen treasure has the same marketable 
value as honestly-earned wealth. 

It is quite right to show the rising generation that 
industry and intelligence are passports to honor and 
the esteem of one's fellows, but these most desirable 
qualities and qualifications are often conspicuously ab- 
sent in those who force their way into what is falsely 
called "the best society," because they hold in their 
hands a golden key. 

Whatever may be said to the contrary, a great in- 
crease in material demands is a weariness alike to the 
intellect and to the flesh, and it was this observation, 
made long ago by the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, 
which made that deeply reflective scribe pronounce the 
sad verdict, "All is vanity and vexation of spirit," a 
sentence which does not by any means imply that human 
life is necessarily vain and vexatious, but only that it 
is rendered so by the pernicious encouragement of in- 
tellectual or sensual idolatry, or a combination of the 
two. Whatever luxury one feels one cannot do without 
one needs the discipline of going without; that is why 
we are so often told by deep reasoners that poverty is 
sometimes a decided blessing, though at other times it 
seems an unmitigated curse. 

Material things are in their very nature dissoluble 
or destructible ; consequently our tenure of them is, per- 
force uncertain. If we have aimed at so high a stand- 
ard of development or attainment that we rest in the 
calm assurance that the commanding power is in our 



34 



own hands, that all material objects are our servants, 
we being masters over all exterior conditions, we can 
certainly enjoy fearlessly all the good things of earth 
which come legitimately in our way; but so long as 
any of us are in fear of losing what we now hold, our 
very enjoyment of things — good enough in themselves — 
is tinctured with dread of their departure; therefore as 
we are helped by finding out how well we can get along 
without many things we once regarded as essentials it 
is often good for us to lose them, so that we may place 
our health and comfort on a nobler basis. 

In these days of rapid and constant transit, travel- 
ers are learning more and more the happy art of mak- 
ing material wants as few as possible. Camping out 
and all varieties of rural enjoyment necessitate bringing 
material wants into the smallest possible compass, but 
people do not feel that they are submitting to involun- 
tary deprivation when they feel freer and happier with- 
out, than with, a vast array of cumbersome parapher- 
nalia. 

Daniel and his three companions at the court of 
Babylon were not forced, through poverty, to live 
simply on vegetables and water, but they far preferred 
their simple fare to all the luxuries of the king's table. 
Idolatry in thought or in secret affection, worship paid 
to things we feel forced to go without, is the most 
pernicious of all phases of idolatry, because it en- 
genders chronic discontent and undermines health and 
character far more than any ostensible act of commonly 
acknowledged idolatry. Worship or adoration never 
really consists in outward acts or in the homage of 
the lips. Prayer can always be silent and secret, there- 
fore the metaphysical view is the only radical or com- 
prehensive view. 

What we love, we draw to us whether we are con- 
scious of this truth or not. For this reason it is always 
supremely important that we should consider well the 
direction of our affections before proceeding to employ 
intellectual machinery to bring the subject of our de- 
sires into objective manifestation. Idolatries of all 
kinds are dangerous, because they cause our energies 
to flow into profitless, if not into positively mischiev- 
ous, channels, thereby causing a serious depletion of 
vital force. 

Idolatry causes all sorts of waste of strength, and is 
responsible for innumerable cases of debility, extremely 
difficult to account for and still more difficult to cure 
on simply physiological grounds. Many people are con- 
stantly complaining of strange nervous depres- 



35 



sion, coupled with extreme physical debility, 
and though they consult physicians, swallow 
medicines, take change of air and bestow 
great attention upon the external side of hygiene, 
they do not recover, but often grow steadily 
weaker despite all their endeavors to renew their 
strength. 

'Interior or subjective phases of idolatry are fre- 
quently, if not invariably, responsible for these sad con- 
ditions, and the plain-spoken spiritual scientist does 
not hesitate, in private consultation, to call upon the 
melancholy invalid to turn his affections as well as his 
thoughts into new and profitable channels. We are 
all led by our emotions, affections or sympathies be- 
fore we are guided by pure reason. 

Worship is an impulse of the heart, not a specula- 
tion of the brain. We adore what we love, not what 
we merely believe in. We cannot reduce idolatry to 
the level of false belief, though false belief may foster 
and support it. Idolatry takes its rise in the emo- 
tions of the heart and enlists the brain to carry out 
the heart's desires. 

We are well aware that modern physiologists may 
rebuke us for employing the old terminology, and in- 
sist that all emotions take their rise in one or other 
of the three chief divisions of the brain — cerebrum, 
cerebellum, and medulla oblongata — but however cor- 
rect may be the present popular physiological, defini- 
tions, the "fact remains that the brain controls all sec- 
tions of the body in such a way that whenever emo- 
tional centres are excited the heart is literally affected 
either for weal or woe. 

All effective healing, which is enduring in its re- 
sults, enlists the affection as well as the reason of the 
patient. We can scarcely repeat too often the frequently 
forgotten truth, that genuine health is, primarily, spir- 
itual and moral elevation, then mental emancipation 
and improvement, and finally bodily and circumstantial 
renovation. 

The second portion of the Second Commandment 
containing the well-known words, "I, the Lord thy God, 
am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers 
upon the children unto the third and fourth genera- 
tions of them that hate Me, and showing mercy unto 
thousands of them that love Me and keep My Com- 
mandments," is not difficult to understand or to 
harmonize with the very latest discoveries in the field 
of heredity, provided we grasp the meaning of the 
original text. 



36 

The word "generations" is a supplied word in the 
fifth verse of the twentieth chapter of Exodus (King 
James Version) ; therefore an erroneous view is taken 
of the entire passage if it is not supplied in the sixth 
verse also. The implied generation, not individual, in 
the original concerns the thousandth or several thous- 
andth generation in the second mention fully as much as 
it concerns the third or fourth generation in the first 
statement, and unless this be clearly admitted the doc- 
trine of the Decalogue respecting the limited perpetuity 
of evil and the everlasting duration of righteousness is 
not brought out, but is beclouded. 

The word "jealous," which is often a cause of con- 
tention _ among scholars, can be better rendered "zeal- 
ous" without doing the slightest violence to the Hebrew 
text. It surely needs but a slight or superficial study of 
the incessant outworking of universal law or order, to 
discover that evil is its own destroyer through the 
sequence of cause and effect. 

The old saying, "Give a murderer rope enough and he 
will hang himself," was meant to illustrate the obvious 
fact that sin is its own punishment, or to speak more ac- 
curately, its own destroyer. Some evils commit sui- 
cide; others murder one another, and others again raise 
up offspring to destroy them. Disorder cannot be of 
everlasting continuance in this world or in any other 
sphere or condition of existence as it is opposed to the 
trend of universal energy. Epes Sargent, in a beautiful 
hymn .found in several Universalist collections, has 
given the following truly scientific interpretation of the 
much-disputed passage "The soul that sinneth it shall 
surely die" by adding to the text this line : "Die to the 
sin that did its life con-fine." 

In some sense all deep thinkers are Universalists, that 
is, they all agree that error is not immortal for good 
alone is eternal ; and strange though it may sound, this 
doctrine is quite compatible with the original version of 
the theological dogma of the everlasting happiness of 
the righteous and the equally everlasting misery of the 
wicked. 

We submit the following propositions inviting all to 
weigh them carefully and see if they are not reasonable, 
logical and just: 

(1) Righteous living induces the result of blessed- 
ness, commonly called the reward of happiness, right- 
eousness being the cause of which happiness is the 
effect. Herein lies the foundation of the doctrine 
of Heaven. 

(2) Unrighteous living induces the result of curs- 
edness commonly called punishment of sin, unright- 



37 

eousness being the cause of which misery is the effect. 
Herein lies the foundation of the doctrine of Hell. 
. (3) Happiness is coeval with righteousness, misery 
is likewise coeval with unrighteousness; therefore the 
relation between the two is in both cases an eternal re- 
lation, a relation fixed and unalterable, founded in the 
Will of God or the Nature of Things. 

(4) Unrighteousness is not inherent in the nature 
of the Universe, and is, therefore, not necessary; but it 
may be expressed as discord, disorder, disease or ab- 
normality, all of which terms imply vincible condi- 
tions, but do not refer to the nature of absolute life 
which is alone invincible. 

(5) As finite entities are capable of making mis- 
takes while engaged in experimental efforts to perfectly 
manipulate the plastic substances which are given to 
them in the outworking of divine order to control, the 
inevitable consequences of wrong doing being painful, 
and in every way disagreeable, God has so safeguarded 
the universe from the possibility of falling at any point 
into hopeless depravity, that the penalties which fol- 
low trespass or transgression are necessarily remedial. 

No chastening, says a New Testament writer, is 
momentarily other than distressful, but it yields the 
peaceable fruits of righteousness in those who are chas- 
tised. We confess ourselves thoroughly disgruntled 
with all controversy for controversy's sake, and we 
would never lift a finger to gain a wordy victory over a 
verbal opponent in the course of a debate, but though 
our motive is utterly pacific, our sole desire being to 
show the most excellent way of universal harmony we 
cannot cry peace, peace, where there is no peace/ and 
tell people complacently that there is no essential dis- 
tinction between right and wrong, or that it makes 
no difference whether we live virtuously or viciously 

Candidly speaking, the old orthodox theology with 
its grim doctrine of capricious foreordination and par- 
ticular predestination, has left no room for ethics in 
theology, while the importation of the adjective vicar- 
ious into all discussions regarding atonement, has 
thrown many a cloud of dust in the mental eyes of dis- 
putants on both sides during utterly needless religious 
controversies. & 

The moral law is intended to promote virtue, to suo- 

?nSLrf'i t0 tUr " ^ e err , ing into the right path through 
appeals to love and fear alike. Needless to argue if we 
are addressing audiences imbued with the spirit of the 
higher education, that it is better far to rule by love 
than fear. It certainly is immeasurably better to ap- 
peal to innate love of goodness than to threaten wrong- 



38 



doers with the awful consequence of guilt. Still, it can 
never be wrong to employ any method of teaching 
which strictly accords with truth, and it is quite as true 
to declare that error produces suffering as to proclaim 
the sweet beautiful certainty that virtue brings delight 
to all who practice it. 

The Bible is a collection of books presenting a very 
great many aspects of truth. It is a literature calling 
for careful study, not a story to be read through as one 
reads a novel, and for this reason it seems impossible, 
within anything like reasonable limits of space, to pre- 
sent all the many aspects of truth which are presented 
in so compendious a collection of writings. 

It is sometimes said that the Decalogue and the Beat- 
itudes are the same in essence, but antithetical in form, 
and it is also said that the Sermon on the Mount and all 
that follows it in the record of the life and teachings 
of Jesus is a reverse statement to the teachings of the 
Hebrew Pentateuch. 

The latter is not in our judgment a substantiate 
criticism, because there are blessings and curses in the 
Old and New Testaments alike, though in proportion to 
space occupied the benedictory form of teaching is 
more conspicuous over the maledictory in the four 
Gospels than in the five books of the Law. We are 
not insinuating that readers as a whole are unfamiliar 
with Leviticus, which has been often called the "Book 
of Blood," (somewhat unwarrantably unless blood be 
given a spiritual interpretation) but we have often met 
with fairly educated people who have been greatly 
surprised when they heard the following texts quoted 
from the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus: "Thou 
shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart — but thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself," (verses 17-18.) And, 
"The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto 
you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as 
thyself," (verse 34.) 

Though we are thoroughly in sympathy with every 
reasonable endeavor to discard all harsh and cruel 
measures which tyrants seek to justify by quoting 
Bible passages in their support, we cannot be so ser- 
vile to vituperative assaults upon the Pentateuch as 
to remain silent when we hear it flagrantly asserted 
that the Jewish God is a monster of cruelty, and that 
we must turn our backs upon the Torah utterly if we 
are to make progress in the ways of peace and 
kindliness. 

If the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, which contains 
a re-statement of the Decalogue with many additional 
commands, should be taken as a guide to life by all 



39 



people today, there would henceforward be no more 
ill-will or strife among nations or tale-bearing to the 
detriment of small communities. 

It is constantly the case that, mingled with many 
grand and noble precepts, there are intermingled some 
of doubtful significance and apparently of little or no 
modern importance, therefore the Ten Words from 
Sinai may be truly regarded as an all-sufficient con- 
densation of Divine Law incumbent upon all humanity. 

Concerning the ever fruitful topic of heredity, it 
requires to be said that a careful reading of the Second 
Commandment refutes entirely the pessimistic view, 
taken by multitudes viz., that if we are born heirs to 
certain distempers, the fathers having eaten "sour 
grapes" the children's teeth are irretrievably "on edge." 

Those who hate God, or in other words those who 
wilfully or deliberately continue in the accursed state 
into which some have been born, these, but these only, 
are involved in the iniquitous generation, a word used 
again and again in the Bible in a very much wider 
sense than its commonly obvious meaning. 

Consider the following illustration of biblical style 
and usage: "This is the generation of them that seek 
Thee, even of them that seek Thy face O God of 
Israel." 

The twenty-fourth Psalm is a beautiful and trium- 
phant canticle of praise in which all the righteous are 
spoken of as a holy generation regardless of the time 
and place of their existence. It is highly necessary to 
take the subject of heredity far out into wider fields 
than the narrow confines in which it is too often held 
enclosed, and let it be said frankly and once for all, 
that if we regard ourselves as bondservants of external 
conditions, all attempts at moral culture are vain and 
every endeavor to change for the better an adverse 
inherited condition must be entirely unavailing. 

It is useless to seek to reconcile blind fatalistic i 
submission to hereditary predispositions with the noble I 
philanthropic efforts now being everywhere made to 1 
rescue sufferers from the toils of a depressing environ-^ 
ment. The facts of hereditary predisposition or"'' 
tendency must be dealt with in the proper place from 
the standpoint of efficient specialists with theological 
results of whose discoveries we have no dispute, but * 
the practical educator is surely called upon to show the 
way out of bondage while many alienists of the 
materialistic school have only shown the way into 
captivity. 

That there has been a way into a condition in which 
we now find ourselves, we must of course rest assured 



40 



and it may be well to unearth that way, so as to warn 
the present race of men and women liable to become 
parents, to avoid conducting the unborn into any such 
inharmonious environment; but the great question 
before us is, where and what is the way out? 

The way in is hatred of God (love of error) accord- 
ing to the Decalogue. The way out is love 
of God (love of righteousness) according to 
the same authority. Now, if you are in a pit 
you wish to be helped out, and if you are 
at all philanthropic you are not simply satisfied with 
the negative good of not forcing others in, but you 
wish to be helpful in assisting out some of your neigh- 
bors who are already engulfed. 

How should we set to work to overcome hereditary 
evils? This is now our pertinent enquiry. Theos- 
ophists have much to say concerning Karma, and, very- 
foggy are some statements and very depressing also, 
in many instances, because they fancy that Karma is 
a mysterious something carried over from one incar- 
nation of the soul to another, instead of compre- 
hending it as a continually active force identifiable 
with the ever-operating law of sequence. 

True it unloubtedly is, that "As a man sows so must 
he reap," but it is not only arbitrary but irrational to 
build up a hypothesis concerning sowing and reaping 
which is entirely foreign to the original conception of 
the Karmic law as declared by the wisest philosophers 
of the East, whose metaphysical system is 'not always 
easily interpreted by Western students. 

During July, 1899, a large number of contributors to 
the Correspondence columns of the Philadelphia 
Bulletin expressed their, for the most part, hazy views 
on the vexed problems of predestination and free 
agency, and it was indeed interesting- to note how 
infrequent were any letters which threw any helpful 
or encouraging light on the infinite question of fore- 
ordination, or predetermination, which seems no more 
settled today than when Wesley and his contemporaries 
threshed the subject out with tireless industry along 
the old lines of Arminian vs. Calvinistic Theology. 

We all know that in most modern pulpits the old 
Calvinism is practically dead; very few Presbyterians 
preach it as of yore, but in these days when so-called 
scientific agnosticism is greatly to the fore, we are far 
more likely to be carried away with a seemingly scien- 
tific substitute than to be led into the trammefs of that 
detestable phase of old theology which wrung from 
Whittier the telling lines, 

"Nothing can be good in Him, 
Which evil is in me." 



41 



Our real danger today lies in our liability to accept 
a doctrine of fatalism, largely if not wholly pessimistic, 
which makes every one of us mere creatures of environ- 
ment; a doctrine which contains nothing of hope or 
helpfulness or inspiration to courageous action. 

If we are satisfied to be mere lotus-eaters, content 
to live the life of a poet's indolent Cuthay, we may be 
resigned to a fatalistic view of life, but such a view 
comports not at all with the enterprising Western 
spirit, which needs to be married to Oriental restful- 
ness before a balance can be struck and equilibrium 
in philosophy be attained. We certainly inherit shapes 
or moulds into which we are born; our psychical as 
well as our physical bodies seem to partake of the dis- 
tinctive qualities including all the peculiarities of our 
immediate progenitors, and sometimes of quite remote 
ancestors, if the theory of atavism be demonstratable. 

Ibsen, in one of his rather gruesome dramas, has 
given us an exaggerated view of hereditary compulsion, 
and like all other fatalists he has sunk into pessimism 
in company with Max Nordau and many other brilliant 
intellects who, though keen and analytical to a certain 
depth, are by no means profound enough to find the 
indomitable soul, the true ego, which lies behind that 
exterior mind which is all that these philosophers 
appear to have discovered. 

Very great good is being done by practical "Sugges- 
tionists in the contributions they are making to a dis- 
tinctive type of psychologic literature. Their highest 
services are invariably rendered to the cause of human 
liberty and progress when they discover that in every 
case the sub-self or "subjective mind" is good in itself 
and amenable to good suggestions always. 

Even among avowedly metaphysical writers we find 
some ambiguity on the score of relative good and evil, 
as in nowise incompatible with absolute good only. 

Were there such a thing as a bad atom somewhere 
in the universe, which chanced to get itself incorporated 
into the fibre of an immortal soul, then we should be 
confronted with a real problem of evil, and our only 
lawful inference would be that unless that atom could 
be destroyed evil must remain a part of the enduring 
creation. But evils are only discords and discords are 
all resolvable into harmonies. 

We contain nothing in our natures which is essen- 
tially or intrinsically other than perfectly good; such 
was the lesson learned by Peter in his vision of the 
net let down from Heaven containing all manner of 
living creatures, some of which he had been accustomed 
to regard as good and others as evil, (Vide Acts x) 



42 



It would be absurd to say that all manners of living 
creatures, including reptiles and insects as well as birds 
and quadrupeds, stand for individual human beings in 
the sense that one man for example is all vulture and 
another all dove; but it is true that the elements or 
ingredients which go to form all creatures collectively 
have their place in the collective and also in the individ- 
ual human economy. 

It is only as we realize the "child of God" or higher 
self, which is the abiding self of every one of us, 
that we can see our way to conquest over the "child of 
man" which is not evil but rightly is subordinate. 
When we come to realize that all things are ours to 
subdue, we render obedience to the highest and exact 
submission from the lowest, thereby bringing order out 
of chaos without altering the essential nature of a single 
atom contained in that chaos which we are resolving 
into cosmos. 

If we are in the generation of the unrighteous, if 
we "sit in the seat of the scornful," if we live accord- 
ing to the way of those who have no "fear of God 
before their eyes," then are we subject unto the opera- 
tion of law on the side of penalty; but if we arise out 
of that lower state and betake ourselves to the moun- 
tain tops of virtuous living, the same immutable law 
works for us on the side of benediction. 

A mountain climber may be under a cloud when it 
bursts so that the rain must fall down upon him, but 
if he be above that cloud the rain still falls into the 
valley beneath, but it is clear sky over his head. The 
law is no respecter of persons, but it is a perfect 
respecter of situations. If you do not get wet it is 
because you are above the cloud, not because you are 
singled out as a special object of the cloud's approval. 

A partial Deity is an idol; the only God intelligent 
humanity can reverence is the God of nature, who is 
also God of grace to all who have found the way to 
live above' their lower nature in the enjoyment of the 
privileges accruing, not from place of birth or creed 
or parentage, but from the ascension of the individual 
above the plane where the law operates as people vainly 
think unmercifully. 

The penalties which follow upon evil-doing are just 
as good in their own day, and considering the pur- 
poses they have to serve, as are the enjoyments which 
follow upon the noblest conduct; therefore, harsh 
though it may seem to say it, there is no cruelty in the 
idea couched in the startling statement "God can be 
just as happy in contemplating the unhappiness, as in 
viewing the happiness of His children." 



43 



Such a statement is indefensible if those who make it 
believe that suffering is anything other than educational. 
Our grief is due to our shortsightedness, and even 
Robert Ingersoll, agnostic though he was, said this 
very thing in substance in many of his lectures. 
Though we could never agree with all the witty 
Colonel's sarcasm and diatribe, we found much to 
admire in Ingersoll's soberest and kindliest sayings, 
and now that he has quitted the scene of his mortal 
experiences, we may well look back upon his singular 
career, to prize the good things he said and remember 
his many kindly actions while oblivion may embrace 
the limitations of his view when he strove to scan a 
spiritual horizon. 

Everything earthly is but relative, and we must 
know to what this relative is related in the wider circle 
of human experience before we are justified in crying 
out against any divine or natural dispensation. The" 
sickness and sorrows we bemoan are legitimate fruits 
of the seeds we have been ignorantly sowing, and as 
we are certainly here on earth to develop self-conscious 
individuality by actual contact with the universal nega- 
tive to which we give the conventional name of matter, 
all our bitter experiences are due to our own mistakes, 
and their bitterness is necessary for a season so that we 
shall not remain satisfied with any erroneous or imper- 
fect statements or conclusions. 

Good alone is eternal; blessedness alone is endless; 
all suffering is temporal and disciplinary! Such is the 
message of the Second Commandment! 



LECTURE FOUR. 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God 
in vain." 

As we proceed with our expositions of the Ten 
Commandments, we find that the well-known texts are 
capable of suggesting vastly more than an obvious and 
conventional elucidation of their language. 

It is only when we allow ourselves to float away, 
so to speak, on the current of a great suggestion, that 
we lose sight of the local incidences of the matter in 
hand, and find that we are transported into a realm 
of life and action absolutely unbounded by special time 
or place. 



44 



So-called "higher criticisms" are often practically- 
valueless to ninety-nine people out of every hundred 
though they have a distinctive value for professors and 
students in seats of learning. What we all need most 
is not a learned account of when, where and how 
certain choice fragments of doctrine were brought 
together, but hints and helps toward beautifying and 
glorifying our own immediate times and circumstances. 

Profane language is always to be condemned, and 
whenever it is accounted vulgar in polite 
circles, many resonant voices are raised against 
it. But the Third Commandment, though it 
unmistakably declares that none are held guilt- 
less who take the name of God in vain, it 
has by no means exhausted its admonitions when we 
reverently accept it as a powerful remonstrant against 
levity in speech, in cases where the Divine Name -or 
any of its equivalents are idly spoken. 

The word "name," on which so much hinges in this 
commandment, means immeasurably more than a super- 
ficial reading can suggest. Names were always orig- 
inally indicative of the character, and often of the 
occupation of those who bore them.. If any one will 
take time to consult a dictionary of Bible names, and 
then read a chapter from any one of the books of the 
Bible, substituting the translated name for the original, 
the narrative, whatever it may be, will be instantly 
brought up to date ; all its archaisms will have vanished, 
and we shall feel ourselves standing in the presence of 
a modern picture and listening to words of revelation 
spoken in our own familiar tongue. 

Moses means one who has been drawn out of water. 
Aaron signifies one who is lofty and intellectually 
enlightened. Moses is he who has risen above the 
intellectual (watery) plane of human consciousness, 
and has been illumined by the divine fire of inmost love 
and wisdom. 

We read everywhere concerning Moses of the be 
havior of the intuitive, and in connection with Aaron 
of the conduct of the simply intellectual type of humani- 
ty, and we cannot fail to discern how easy it was for 
the people to compel Aaron to minister to their love of 
idols, while Moses brake in pieces the calf of gold, 
which his brother had fashioned at the people's request, 
immediately he returned into the camp from the 
mountain summit. 

Intuitive perception of truth leads where unaided 
intellect can only follow. Moses and Aaron are 
brothers, and Aaron is always the elder of the two 
because intellectual development precedes spiritual 



45 



illumination in the orderly process of human regener- 
ation. The new and higher birth of the embodied soul 
into celestial consciousness adds to its possessions of 
knowledge, but never removes information intellec- 
tually received. 

As we advance higher and penetrate more deeply 
into the universal arcana, we cannot give up or forfeit 
a ^y °f our former possessions while we are perpetually 
adding to our conscious store. Moses knows more than 
Aaron; the younger must rule the people in preference 
to the elder, for that which is latest born is highest 
born, and to this "truth the scientific doctrine of evolu- 
tion abundantly testifies. 

The Ten Commandments may be compared to a 
? • er ' i? fte foundat i° n is uncompromising mono- 
theism, ^Have we not all one Father, hath not one God 
created us all?y Theology and theocracy are so inex- 
tricably interwoven with anthropology and democracy, 
that they are virtually inseparable. It is a most wel- 
come reflection which follows naturally upon a perusal 
of agnostic and even of avowedly infidel literature, that 
the chief attacks upon ideas of Deity commonly enter- 
tamed in the religious world are leveled against 
conceptions of God which are, at root, so odious that 
we can fearlessly assert that it would be better to 
entertain no God-idea at all than entertain so hideous 
a travesty. 

Name means character; therefore, "Thou shalt not 
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," means 
primarily, thou shalt not attribute to the Supreme Being 
attributes and actions which thou wouldst scorn with 
indignation, were they attributed to thee. 

What is called "liberal religion," or "new progressive 
orthodoxy" in Christian circles today, is only a clarified 
and amplified statement of views expressed by enlight- 
ened thinkers everywhere and through all ages Much 
that is styled new today is extremely old, and nowhere 
is this rendered more evident than in many treatises 
upon the new woman, whose portrait was painted by 
bolomon, or Lemuel or whoever wrote the thirty-first 
chapter of Proverbs many a century before what is now 
termed Woman Suffrage," or "Political Equality" 
called for advocacy among the nations of the West. 

That is a narrow view taken by many commentators, 
who say that the God of the Old Testament is not the 
God of the New Testament, because the common ideas 
of God entertained by ancient Jews were vastly inferior 
to those proclaimed by Jesus. 

Marie Corelli, in one of her short stories, "The 
bong of Miriam," and also in her exceedingly forceful 



46 



book, "Barabbas," has unduly dwelt upon the harsher 
aspects of the Old Testament conception of Deity. 
Henry Wood, in "Victor Sirenus," has fallen into the 
same error. It seems very difficult indeed for any 
writer who is earnest and enthusiastic and fired with 
strong convictions, to altogether escape prejudice and 
to steer entirely clear of bias, when alluding to the 
peoples and products of other lands and ages than 
those with which the author feels most vitally in 
sympathy. It is equally the case when sympathies are 
very strongly aroused in any direction, for then as 
much too much is said in favor of the favored side as 
is said in opposition to the side disfavored. 

There is really no conflict between the essence of 
Judaism and the spirit of Christianity. The letter of 
the two systems is certainly at variance, but the soul 
of both is the same. When in the model prayer of the 
Gospels we find the clause "Hallowed be thy Name," 
we are at once taken back to the Decaiogue and 
reminded of the third command from Sinai. Thou 
shalt hallow the divine name, is the spiritual rendering; 
whenever people are ready for spiritual interpretations 
it is time to let go of all further clinging to the negative 
form of the same commandment. 

To look at a subject on both sides is to treat that 
subject with judicial fairness; then if we find one side 
far more beautiful than the other, we are doing quite 
right to expose the loveliest side to public view. It 
has been unwisely said that it is easier to obey a nega- 
tive than an affirmative command. This is certainly 
not invariably the case, and as this aspect of the situa- 
tion is of great importance to parents and teachers 
everywhere, we beg to insist that very many of the 
severest hardships encountered by guardians and 
directors of the young grow out of the- erroneous use 
of the unpleasant formula "thou shalt not/' to the 
almost total exclusion of the delightful and encour- 
aging phrase "thou shalt." 

Thou shalt pronounce the divine name with rever- 
ence. Herein lies the gist of the Third Commandment. 
The strictly orthodox Jew, who is a rigid literalist, 
deems it necessary to bring a scroll of the Law into a 
court room and to swear with his hand upon the sacred 
parchment. Many Christians deem it necessary to 
kiss a Bible so that they may be bound by their oath, 
but Quakers who will only affirm, as they take literally 
the words of the Sermon on the Mount: "Swear not at 
all," are found quite as reliable after their simple 
affirmation as people of other creeds who have kissed 
books or sworn with their hands on parchment. 



47 



Doubtless a primitive or undisciplined state of feeling 
demands an impressive ritual. "So help me God," is 
a phrase which grates harshly on many sensitive ears, 
though it greatly helps some people who need an exter- 
nal or verbal stimulant to enable them to keep their 
word. Such an expression does not imply taking the 
name of God in vain, unless one uses the expression 
with intent to deceive or cheat a neighbor or else so 
thoughtlessly that it leaves no impression on the mem- 
ory even of the one who has pronounced it. Such an 
ejaculation may be sometimes a prayer, a sincere 
aspiration for divine help and guidance, and when it is 
thus honest and fervent, even though some scientists 
will class it with simple auto-suggestions, it will assur- 
edly bear satisfactory fruit. Developed natures have 
absolutely no need for it. 

When you say that a man's word is his bond, you 
imply that it would be altogether superfluous to bond 
him otherwise. "According to thy word it shall be unto 
thee," and "According to thy word be it unto thee," 
are two declarations covering the entire subject of 
oaths and affirmations. Take the first of these sen- 
tences and regard it as a prophecy of universal import. 
See how it illuminates the books of the Law. "An 
eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" is everlasting 
justice which none can escape, for the time will never 
come when we can knock out our neighbor's teeth or 
pluck out our neighbor's eyes and not incur a penalty. 

People love to sing, "Free from the law, oh, happy 
condition," but unless they are very cautious in their 
interpretation of what they sing, they are apt to de- 
generate into utter lawlessness, then they need to be 
told again that license is not liberty and freedom is 
secured by righteous law. 

Let us be solemnly ethical in our theology; we may 
surpass simple morality but we must never fall below 
it. The great vice of Calvinism consists in its perni- 
cious dogma of misconceived election. "The King can 
do no wrong," shouts the idolatrous monarchist. "The 
elect can do no wrong," screams the upholder of the 
doctrine of pretention. 

Antinomians, who were very plentiful a century or 
more ago, declared openly that God's elect people could 
not possibly do any evil in the sight ot Heaven, no 
matter what crimes they might be guilty of, and they 
also taught with equal vociferation that the non-elect 
could do naught that was other than displeasing to the 
Almighty, no matter how sweet and virtuous their lives 
among men might prove. 



48 



Contrast this abominable heresy with such fine 
Jewish teaching as "God's people are all the righteous 
ones," and Paul's declaration that whoever worketh 
righteousness is acceptable to the All-righteous One. 
The practical ethical culturist or moral educator will 
not hesitate an instant between Judaism and Calvinism, 
if the choice be offered him. 

"The Lord will hold no one guiltless who swears 
falsely," said the ancient prophet. "Show me thy faith 
by thy works," said James the Apostle, to those in his 
day who taught that belief, not character, was of 
supremest moment. Beliefs are largely influenced by 
circumstances, by place of birth, by early training, by 
the associations of later years, and by a thousand 
features of environment which have absolutely nothing 
to do with good will or noble character; but fidelity 
or infidelity to a trust, compliance or non-compliance 
with the terms of a voluntary self-signed contract, the 
resolve to keep or break one's word, these and all 
kindred considerations have to do with the very fun- 
damentals of ethics, and cannot be lightly esteemed 
by any who are seeking to impress upon the grow- 
ing generation the need of strict integrity in thought, 
word and deed, as the supreme passport to happi- 
ness on earth and blessedness in Heaven. 

Among the many objectionable practices in which 
people often indulge, and which are certainly rebuked 
in the Third Commandment, is that of calling upon 
God in the most shocking way to do something dreadful 
to us if we do not do certain things ourselves. The 
intention of the speaker in such a case is to impress 
the bystanders, without usually much, if any, deep 
thought of the dreadful import of the spoken word; but 
we have clearly no right to call upon God to visit us 
with calamities, as the very act itself is" one of pre- 
sumption and of blasphemy. 

Treating the subject from the standpoint of Occult- 
ism, it is easy enough to see what was intended by the 
old proverb, "Curses, like chickens, always come home 
to roost." Substitute the word "blessings," and you 
can enforce the lesson of the proverb in a far gentler 
and pleasanter, but in none the less forcible a way. 
The simple fact of echo serves to illustrate one of the 
profoundest truths taught by the world's greatest seers 
and sages, viz., the certainty with which psychic utter- 
ances return upon the sender. 

No one can possibly go out among resounding rocks 
and hills and utter words of good and wise intent, with- 
out the answering echo giving back the identical words 
sent forth. In like manner the same reverberating 



49 



rocks and hills must reply with maledictions to those 
who contaminate the air with foul or cruel speech. 

We may never be fully certain of the extent of 
influence we can exert on others. Mental treatments 
may easily enough be given, but we cannot be assured 
that in every instance they will be received or taken by 
those to whom they are intentionally sent. The effect 
upon ourselves in every case is indubitable, because of 
the kind and rate of vibration we set up by speaking, 
or even by quietly thinking, in our own organisms. 
, t A 0 J> less ls to be blessed. He who blesses others 
blesses Tiimself as well; and he who seeks or wills to 
bless another, whether that other is open to receive the 
proffered boon or not, blesses himself by uttering any 
word of heartfelt benediction, no matter toward whom 
the good wish is projected. We are never sympathetic 
with unduly harsh interpretations of scripture, nor do 
we believe that harsh renderings are true; but it is 
simply namby-pambyism to gloss over all the sterner 
aspects of a moral revelation and feed the Children of 
Israel, or any other children, on an innutritious diet of 
sweetmeats only. Bitter herbs are necessary factors in 
the Passover meal, and many of the precepts of the 
Law, though sweet as honey in the inward parts, after 
they have been assimilated and digested, are very bit- 
ter in their first taste when they begin to enter the 
mouth of understanding. 

It seems to be the opinion of many would-be teachers 
of the young in these days, that every moral pill should 
be disguised and sugar-coated so that children should 
be led to swallow medicine unawares. With such a 
policy we do not agree, because it often results in dis- 
trust and moral nausea. Many children have been in- 
jured rather than aided by medicines clandestinely 
administered in jam or coffee. If it is necessary to 
take a bitter dose, let's take it manfully; bitters and 
acids are just as good as sweets in their own day and 
generation, as they have a work of beneficence to 
accomplish which sweets are powerless to perform. 

Penalties due to transgression are meted out by the 
same wise loving Providence which rewards our virtu- 
ous actions, therefore, we must be quite as thankful 
for the blow that smites as for the balm that heals. 
This may be a difficult doctrine to accept without 
reflection, but it is the only sound and reasonable conso- 
lation for the afflicted. 

We cannot make intelligent people believe they are 
not in pain when they are suffering agony, but if we 
are truly wise, we_ can induce them to look at their 
afflictions in an entirely new and altogether comforting 



50 



and salutary light. The great unsolved, though not 
necessarily unsolvable problem of the ages, is why are 
we called upon to suffer? Suffering is incidental to 
growth in an experimental world provided we make the 
mistakes which occasion it, but not otherwise. 

Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll was called a blasphemer 
times without number, but among the characteristic 
sayings of Ingersoll occurs the following: "I would 
like to see this world without crime and without a 
tear." Such a sentiment is in itself truly beautiful and 
reflects credit upon whoever entertains it, but it is 
possible that a good-hearted man, like the famed 
agnostic lecturer and lawyer, may not have clearly seen 
how to rid the world of crimes and tears. To inveigh 
against a malady is not to remedy it, for remedies are 
to be found only in conquest, not in complaint. We 
may bemoan iniquities and weep over the sorrows of 
those about us, thereby evincing genuine kindhearted- 
ness, without being able (through lack of insight into 
causes) to overcome a single one of the evils we desire 
to see removed. 

People too often forget that we are here to develop 
individual characters, and that law must be inexorable 
to render possible our development. It is from 
shortsightedness on the part of many writers on both 
sides of a controversy that so-called metaphysical liter- 
ature is heavily weighted with rash denials and affirma- 
tions. Writers against metaphysical healing are never 
tired of exposing the absurdity of denying the present 
temporary existence of ailments which mental practi- 
tioners are often paid to cure. 

If by reason of "taking the name of God in vain," 
we are suffering the penalty of this irreverence, it is 
useless to deny the existence of the legal penalty or 
plead guiltless when we are convicted -of error. 

The proper attitude to take when we are suffering 
the consequence of folly, is to look our penalty in the 
face and accept it thankfully; ' a course which would 
truly be impossible if we did not discern something of 
the beneficial object for which the penalty is admin- 
istered. 

While dealing with the question of penalty, let us 
look to our own ways in this concern. A child has 
committed some offense, and in order to bring home tp 
him a truth he needs to become familiar with, a wise 
teacher or parent gives him a lesson to learn or some 
useful task to perform. Such a task can 
never resemble walking the treadmill or pick- 
ing oakum, nor should it ever be any sort 
of useless occupation, but invariably a work use- 



5i 



ful in itself as to its results, and particularly- 
adapted to counteract the special vice which it is meant 
to conquer. 

Mere punishments only harden. Men and women 
g-row callous in prisons and soon attain a sullen indif- 
ference to a life of degradation which is the very reverse 
of beneficial in its reactionary influence upon society at 
large. All penalties must be educational to be 
righteous, and when they are such, prison reform will 
no longer be the difficult measure it has long been 
found to be. 

The Lord never punishes as man punishes. Those 
who attribute to God baseness and pettiness resembling 
their own mistaken motives of right government, would 
do well to note the deep significance of the immortal 
saying, "Love is the fulfilling of the Law." So long as 
there are quibbles concerning justice as opposed to 
mercy, it is plain that the meaning of equity has not 
been found. 

Charity is a sweet word, and when it is rendered as 
the alternate of love, there is none grander in the entire 
lexicon; but so long as justice is forgotten and 
so-called but unreal charity is extolled at the expense 
of equitable dealing, there must be riots and insurrec- 
tions and manifold outcries against laws that are, 
truly speaking, illegal and against miscalled order 
which is but disorder in disguise. 

Much that is called Anarchy is not an intentional 
protest against law and order on the part of outraged 
famishing multitudes, who in their desperation resort 
to frantic violence to redress their wrongs. The cry 
of all such is for justice against injustice, and if they 
declare themselves lawless it is because the only law 
they have known has been a law of oppression and 
cruelty. 

Edna Lyall, one of the most religious of popular 
novelists, has not hesitated in "We Two," and others 
of her noble books, to handle the "blasphemy laws" 
without restraint. One of her leading characters 
strongly resembles Charles Bradlaugh in many telling 
features, and she no doubt got much material for "We 
Two" (a pathetic story of a devoted father and 
daughter) from the celebrated discussions which at one 
time literally convulsed the thought of England on the 
question whether a "blasphemer" might sit in the House 
of Commons, after he had been elected member for 
Northampton by an overwhelming majority of qualified 
rate-payers. 

Agnostics can never be fairly accused of blasphemy, 
but Bradlaugh openly proclaimed himself an atheist; 



52 

but honest atheists are not blasphemers for as they 
deny that any Deity exists it is impossible that they 
should speak wilfully against the Being whose very 
existence they deny. Atheism may be blindness and 
stultification, but it is not blasphemy. He who knows 
nothing of God and frankly declares that the name of 
the Supreme Being conveys no image to his mind, is 
not in any sense one who takes the name of God in 
vain; but they who make free with the name of the 
Almighty and accuse God of crimes against love and 
justice, which they themselves would not commit, are 
the real blasphemers. 

On Sunday, July 23, 1899, many a pulpit rang with 
the truthful declaration that Ingersoll's infidelity was 
largely induced by the lovelessness of the theology 
forced upon him in his childhood, and by the very sour 
and often grossly hypocritical lives of loudly professing 
religionists. 

As name and nature mean the same, they who take 
God's name in vain are they who sin against the divine 
attributes, whether they embody them in their thought 
in a divine Person or not. Do you love righteousness ? 
Do you love love? Do you love truth? Do you love 
justice and mercy combined in equity. If you do you 
love God, whether you have or have not an intellectual 
conception of God in your creed or declaration of 
opinions. 

In the New Testament there is much said about 
'The name which is above every name," and "the name 
whereby we must be saved." 

If we ask in the name of Jesus it is in the spirit 
which is manifested through the Uplifter of the race. 
If you are in the love of things divine, you must be 
saved; to be in the love of truth and goodness is to be 
in the only affection that can truly save. People are 
not safe for heaven because they are professing 
Christians, nor in danger of condemnation because they 
are outside the nominally Christian fold. It is but a 
trick of priestcraft to exalt sacraments, ~xtol ordi- 
nances and glorify shibboleth so that the path to 
heaven appears a road of diction and ceremony instead 
of a pathway of loving kindness. 

Who can say that the creedful man is any nobler 
than his creedless brother? Who can prove that 
churchgoers are any truer than their non-church going 
neighbors? Man looks ever at some outward appear- 
ance, while God views the heart. No one is ever safer 
than his inmost affection makes him; none are higher 
in spiritual life than their deepest love has carried 
them. Aw3.y with all the cant and illusion of empty 



53 

profession, for it is the pretense of a cloud which 
contains no water wherewith to refresh the thirsty 
earth. J 

Missionary enterprises are largely farcical; contri- 
butions to missionary endeavor are steadily decreasing 
for the 'heathen" are finding "Christians" out. Will 
you neglect want at your own door that you may irritate 
the placid Hindu with an invitation to an English 
church and roast mutton, when in his own way he is 
quite as near to Para-Brahm as you may be to Adonai 
or to Jesus. 

All people cannot pray or praise in the same tongue 
Some call it evolution and others call it God" is a 
poet's way of saying that seekers after truth are every- 
where endeavoring to interpret the phenomena of 
Nature upon which they reverently gaze, each in his 
own way; and, we who say it is God working in, 
through, and by evolution, have no dispute with any 
who are seeking and groping after a truth so infinite 
that no intellect can grasp it in its perfection. 
_ There is nothing of sweetness and light in the 
impudence of bigotry which is altogether sour and 
dark. Those priests who repeat like parrots the 
untranslated phrase, "there is no salvation outside the 
one holy universal church," are dealing treacherously 
with the people if they insinuate that that church is 
Roman, Greek, Anglican, Evangelical, or aught else 
that is sectional. 

No one is saved until he enters the true living 
universal church of the Holy Spirit, which embraces 
the pure, upright, merciful, and loving of all climes 
and nations. For such is "the church of the first-born 
whose names are written in Heaven." The mighty 
thundenngs of Divine Law are terrors to evil-doers 
that such may cease to do evil and learn to do well-' 
but they are misinterpreted if any one of them is taken 
to mean aught other than the pleadings of divine 
beneficence. No drunkard, thief, adulterer, nor 
covetous person enters the kingdom of Heaven; there- 
fore, that all may enter it at last, there must be what 
men call hells and purgatories, houses of correction 
states (if not places) of corrective chastisement in this 
world, and wherever else in the universe such may be 
required Verily the worm shall not die so long as 
there is filth for it to devour at the mouth of Gehenna, 
and verily the flame shall not be quenched until every 
particle of error and every vestige of uncleanness has 
been consumed in its purifying blaze, 
i -P^kil-i* the wiI 4 er ness; Zion is in the promised 
land. While we are in the wilderness we are within 



54 



sight and sound of Sinai, and as Shakespeare has 
truly told us in the immortal soliloquy of "Hamlet," 
"Conscience doth make cowards of us all." But heart 
of grace, ye travelers; you shall all reach Canaan, and 
then that same conscience shall make heroes of you all. 
The Lord will never hold you guiltless so long as you 
take his name in vain, but you will not always profane 
your sanctuary, you will not always defile your temple; 
you will all come some day under the spell of the 
anthem "Blessed are all they who love the Law and 
delight to observe its precepts." The common practice 
of using profane language is with many people little 
more than a bad habit, picked up on the street. Such 
a habit is an offense against decency, and should be 
promptly put down, but it is not -intentional blasphemy. 
Mere careless flippancy of the tongue is not sin in the 
heart; it would be cruel and unjust to tell the vulgar 
user of fashionable bad language that he is a sinner 
in the sight of Heaven, when he is only a simpleton 
who imagines that it is manly and "the correct thing" 
to echo the vulgarity of fashionable clubs and aristo- 
cratic boarding schools.. 

It is a far more serious matter to trifle with one's 
word, and it is an awful thing to call God to witness 
to a lie. Caution and discretion are ever necessary 
to genuine valor; no one is a coward because he is duly 
cautious. To think before speaking and to look before 
leaping is ever the course of the valiant man ; but when 
a pledge has been signed and a word given, though 
you have sworn to your own hindrance, your word 
holds you. It is then too late to draw back" 

How marvelously God is revealed in the postoffice 
system of all civilized countries today. You have 
posted your letter and you cannot withdraw it from 
the box or bag. God is again revealed in the Sinai 
of our telegraphic system, and in the profound mysteries 
of the submarine cable. You have sent your message 
and you cannot recall it. No matter how many letters, 
telegrams or cablegrams you may send afterward, you 
cannot take back the words which you have already 
committed to the charge of God's omnipresent servant, 
electricity. God is in today's- lightning and nowhere 
more prominently revealed than in that very force you 
chain to do your bidding, and which serves you 
humbly, but magnificently on God's terms, and on no 
others. 

If the agnostic fails to find God in Nature, he 
discovers at least a law that is immutable. If Deity 
is not found by the honest sceptic, order which is 



55 



changeless is discovered by every scientist, no matter 
where he interrogates the universe. 

Ingersoll, agnostic though he was, paid many mighty 
and eloquent tributes to the Unknown God (who 
seemed to him to be unknowable) when he voiced the 
Gospel in his own creed, and paid tribute as a lawyer 
to the inflexibility of the Law of Nature. The Gospel 
is in the Law ; it is the soul of it. _ Zion is the heart of 
Sinai; the Sermon on the Mount is first the Sermon 
in the Mount. There shall ever be exacted one eye 
and one tooth in return for the same, and so long as 
man sheds his brother's blood, that blood will cry for 
vengeance upon him from the ground which has 
absorbed it. None are held guiltless who have opposed 
themselves to irreversible order. 

What folly it is to talk of breaking the law. There 
never were any law-breakers, and there never can be 
any, but all who oppose the law are opposed success- 
fully by it ; it is they, not the law, who must needs be 
broken. 

It cannot now be long before the many discording 
voices which agitate the enquiring world will melt into 
a grand new harmony, such as was necessarily impos- 
sible in olden days, when lack of that knowledge of 
each other, which is only born of free social inter- 
course, made differences seem disagreements. We cannot 
agree to disagree, but we must agree to differ. The five 
great races into which the human family is divided 
may remain as distinct as the five fingers of the human 
hand, all growing out of one palm, and all essential 
to the integrity of the total member. 

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God 
in vain" is as much a message to the Brahmin and to 
the Buddhist, as it is to the Jew and to the Christian. 
God never leaves himself without witness in human 
conscience. Dr. James Martineau, one of the most 
venerable and intuitive of the religious writers of the 
Nineteenth century, has rendered glorious service to 
the cause of universal religion even in his most critical 
works with which some of his friends may not be able 
to wholly sympathize. In his masterly volume, "The 
Seat of Authority in Religion," Dr. Martineau has 
shown that even though there be no reasonable ground 
for accepting ecclesiastical or sacerdotal authority of 
any sort, the teaching of one of his own magnificent 
hvmns will prove all the truer for humanity. 
"He who himself and God would know,^ 
Into the silence let him go, 
And, lifting off pall after pall 
Reach to the inmost depth of all!" 



56 



What matters any geographical or chronological 
aspect of Sinai? What matters the authenticity of the 
Mosaic Pentateuch from the standpoint of Colenso 
and the later critics? "Thou shalt not take the name 
of the Lord thy God in vain/' is today's message from 
the seat of authoritative revelation within, and woe 
betide whoever proves false to the voice of the spirit 
within him. 

What signifies verbal orthodoxy or heterodoxy; 
orthodoxy is your doxy whoever you may be and what- 
ever you may believe; heterodoxy in your eyes is the 
sum of opinions on which you have not deigned to 
set the seal of your personal approval. 

We need to listen to Emerson, and to all other great 
philosophers who have turned from tables of stone 
without to tables of spirit within. The soul is its own 
witness. It is, as Emerson said, original and solitary. 
It is mature in the infant; it speaks with no uncertain 
tone even in those who are insolently called urchins 
and street Arabs. If you believe in natural human 
depravity you outrage the Decalogue, for the law 
expects no one to perform an impossibility, and Sinai's 
trumpet call is to every listener to hear and to obey. 

Theologians have dared to say that God gives a law 
which man cannot keep, and that the well-beloved Son 
must keep it for them as their substitute. Such is not 
the voice from Sinai, neither is it the symphony of 
Zion. From the holier mountain the higher heavenly 
music sounds in dulcet accents "I, being lifted up will 
draw all humanity unto me," and, "Be ye of good 
courage, for I have overcome the world." 

If the law is to be fulfilled in love, then are we all 
counselled so to fulfill it. Larger insight follows upon 
the smaller earlier view. The children of Israel, 
"babes in Christ" have not yet heard the inner voice 
nor been able to discern the deeper message. How 
significant is the veiling of the face of Moses by 
request of the people; not eagles, but owls, rather, were 
the members of the congregation which Moses faced 
when he came down from the mountain and resumed 
his task of seeking to lead a nomadic multitude out of 
carnal bondage into spiritual liberty. If today's Moses 
covers his face it is because you have requested him to 
do so. If today's revelations to you are obscure, literal 
and harsh, it is because you are not ready to listen 
to the voice that speaketh from heaven in deeper and in 
sweeter melody. 

The sign of the prophet Jonah is the only sign which 
can ever be given to an evil and adulterous generation. 
The whole book of Jonah is in the Third Command- 



57 



ment. Let us not ridicule as "an. old fish story" a 
poem and a parable, b a living allegory, which sets 
forth for all time the consequences of disobedience to 
a heavenly vision and analyses to perfection the motives 
which have led to that disobedience. Let us not laugh 
at Elisha's baldness, nor scoff at the two she-bears 
who devour forty-two impertinent children. Laugh 
if you will at what seems to you to be but comical tales 
from a credulous past, but take heed lest while sneering 
at the letter you cast away the spirit which giveth life. 

Shallow scoffing at correspondential imagery resolves 
itself at length into diatribe leveled against nut-shells 
as an article of diet. We all need spiritual nut-crack- 
ers, without them we cannot read any Bible. The 
kernels within the shells are for our nutriment; when 
we are eating the delicious meat of the nuts we feel no 
disposition to revile the shells that once were necessary 
to preserve it. "To thine own self be true." Shakes- 
peare is a good commentator. Be we all obedient to 
the inner voice; let us follow the inner light and we 
shall never walk in darkness. 

If we need thunder, we shall hear thunder, but when 
we are ready for heavenly whisperings we shall hear 
the still small voice. The Lord is not in the tempest, 
but the fierce hurricane and the devouring flame make 
straight the way for the approach of Truth, which al- 
ways comes to us in proportion as we are able to 
bear it. 



LECTURE FIVE. 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 
"Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day." 

The sentence from the Fourth Commandment quoted 
above, though frequently put forward as though it 
constituted the entire command, is really exactly one- 
seventh of the commandment, which also reads, "Six 
days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work." Six- 
sevenths of this commandment relates to what we call 
work, and one-seventh to what we term rest. Rest and 
work are so inextricably interwoven in the warp and 
woof of things, that the great problem to be solved is 
how to so combine them that we may learn to work 
restfully and rest actively. 

The first chapter of Genesis contains the declaration 
that God is a Sabbath-keeper, working for six days and 
then enjoying a period of repose. Needless ridicule 



58 



has been heaped upon this saying by those whose bibli- 
cal criticism is confined to the literal text only, and 
that text they by no means fully understand. 

Rest and work are both involved in the world plan, 
in the universal order. God does not ask us to do 
what He does not do Himself; this is a fair inference, 
and this was undoubtedly in the thought of Moses and 
the other scribes who long before the time of Ezra 
produced in sections the material out of which the 
Pentateuch gradually grew. 

"Remember" is a word which immediately suggests 
recollection and reminiscence. The Sabbath law is older 
than the twentieth chapter of Exodus. Sabbath ob- 
servances are more ancient by far than the period of 
the personal Moses who announced to the Israelites in 
the Arabian wilderness the Law which he declared he 
did not invent or formulate, but simply made public. 
A genius is often described as one who thinks God's 
thoughts after Him. Everyday talent is only imitative, 
while genius is original and creative, and, though there 
is nothing new under the sun per se, there are many 
revelations which are new and others which are old 
to the people to whom those revelations are particularly 
addressed. 

The Decalogue is not by any means a string of 
novelties or a set of purely original propositions, and 
as this fact is well known to all who have given it the 
least historical study, there is nothing startling or 
revolutionary in such an announcement, even when made 
by those who put it forward as a reason for shaping 
the popular faith in the Ten Commandments as a divine 
revelation. 

Divine law makes provision for human nature in its 
entirety.. Body and soul are yokefellows; the care of 
the one is essential to the welfare of the* other. Herein 
lies the essential truth of metaphysics, which, when com- 
pletely dissociated from the mass of unprovable asser- 
tion with which metaphysical truths are often surround- 
ed, is a gospel of good tidings adapted to every de- 
partment of human life and activity. The comprehen- 
sive inclusiveness of the Sabbath law is clearly seen in 
its equal application to human beings, to animals, and 
to the land also. 

The narrow Sabbatarian, who makes the holy day 
the very reverse of a holiday and condemns children 
to the rigors of a hard, unlovely, puritanical observance 
from which multitudes have turned away in later years 
with disgust and anger, is largely responsible for the 
protest against Sabbath keeping which is now fiercely 
rampant in many quarters where the non-observance of 



59 



a weekly rest-day contributes immensely to neurotic 
disorders of every variety. 

If the original Sabbath law had reference to religious 
exercises only, it could not have been enforced, as it 
certainly was, with regard to animals who were never 
required to attend a place of worship or to engage in 
any exercises of devotion, nor could it have been bind- 
ing upon the farmer to till the soil for six years, and 
then let the land rest during the seventh year. 

Instead of the reference to God's creation of the 
world being intended to support a theory of six days of 
creative work, each of only twenty-four hours duration, 
the fact that there are six years during which land is 
to be tilled and the seventh year when it is to lie fallow, 
shows that such brief days, as we are ordinarily accus- 
tomed to reckon, have no necessary connection with 
the order of creation; but the mystery and meaning of 
the number seven is obviously alluded to throughout. 

Psychology and physiology are completely at one in 
this teaching. One rest day out of every seven is 
mentally and physically beneficial to all who take ad- 
vantage of it; therefore in the interests of the human 
mind and body we are fully prepared to advocate Sab- 
bath keeping of a rational sort on the platform of any 
Secular Society, or in any hall of Science in any part 
ot the world. 

Religion is not something that stands apart or aloof 
from all the material interests of humanity, therefore 
there is very much attention given to dietary rules and to 
all matters pertaining to cleanliness in the Pentateuch. 
Those Christians who are particularly anxious to repudi- 
ate Judaism, both in letter and in spirit, go to absurd 
extremes in quoting from the gospels rules and precepts 
which do not touch the essence of Mosaic legislation 
at any point as though they bore decidedly against it. 

There are always two sides to every subject, the inner 
and the outer, and the outer can never be of equal 
importance with the iner. "Clean hands and a pure 
heart," taken literally, cannot be of equal value; there- 
fore the disciples of Jesus are told by their Master that 
it is not the soiled condition of physical hands which 
constitutes the defilement of those who are defiled, but 
the injustice which they practice in connection with 
their manual industries. In the esoteric sense of the 
Law's teaching to be guilty of unclean hands is to em- 
ploy those members in works of dishonesty or in any 
deeds of unrighteousness. At the same time physiolo- 
gists come forward today and tell us that it is essential 
to health to handle food with literally clean hands, and 



6o 

to be cleanly in all kitchen arrangements, because* dirt, 
microbes and disease are never separable. 

The entire Torah is full of legislative enactments 
which spiritually concern the inmost life of the soul, 
while outwardly they deal with hygienic provisions for 
toe external side of human comfort and well-being. 
The Sabbath law is not a dead issue; it is one of the 
most thoroughly alive questions of today, and instead 
of its falling into desuetude it is being brought most 
prominently to the front as a factor in present legis- 
lation. Let us see what the Fourth Commandment 
really counsels in this regard. It says nothing of 
temple, church or synagogue, and nothing of any devo- 
tional rites. In its majestic simplicity it says, "Thou 
shalt not do any work, neither thou, nor thv son, nor 
thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid- 
servant, nor thy cattle nor the stranger that is within 
thy gates." 

Here is strict legislation, to forbid the exaction of an 
undue amount of labor, either from servants or from 
animals.. Truth is the word of God; whoever discovers 
truth speaks God's word after Him. Whatever is most 
conducive to human welfare is God's will concerning 
humanity. Laws from heaven arejiot given to be irk- 
some or unduly restrictive of human freedom; they 
are revealed as guide posts that we may see our way to 
the port of health and happiness, for which we are all 
steering intentionally, however widely we in ignorance 
may stray from the safe and certain road that leads 
thereto. 

To understand the institution of the Sabbath we need 
to grasp the import of the words of Jesus, "The Sab- 
bath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." 
There were Sabbatarians in Judea, two thousand years 
or less ago, so extreme in their exaggerated literalism 
that they actually discussed in grave assemblies the, to 
us, ludicrous question whether it were lawful to eat 
an egg on the following day which a hen had laid dur- 
ing the sacred Sabbath. 

The New Testament contains a philosophical reply to 
those extremists who had exalted the Midrash and other 
empirical commentaries upon the Law far above the 
text of the Pentateuch itself, therefore, without some 
knowledge of the Talmud, its contents and origin, the 
commentator upon much of the New Testament is apt 
to misconstrue its literal application. 

The disciples of Jesus violated a great many rabbinical 
counsels, among which were many prescriptions with 
reference to the Sabbath, some of which are in vogue 
among strictly orthodox Jews at the present moment. 



Piles of traditions have so encumbered the original 
L,aw that it is often next to impossible to catch 
glimpses of the purity of the ancient precepts beneath 
such an immense array of superincumbent ordinances 
All great legal instruments are subject to disfigurement 
in after years, and in no case do we find a more 
striking instance of subsequent adulterations and falsi- 
fications of the spirit of an original, than in the oresent 
actual government of the United States of America 
when we contrast it with those two marvelously com- 
pact legal instruments which avowedly constitute the 
foundation of American administration— the Constitu- 
tion of the United States and the Declaration of 
independence. 

Speaking secularly on the Fourth Commandment, we 
may truly insist that physiology supports the Decalogue. 
Moses was an anthropologist of the highest rank, a 
man who knew what was good for the health of a 
people, even though he had no special divine aid or 
heaven-bom inspiration. A wise leader always insists 
upon the observance of health rules which are essential 
to the well-being of the people whom he is seeking to 
lead out of bondage into liberty, regardless of the par- 
ticular form of servitude from which he is seeking to 
deliver them; and as health and morals always go 
together it is but specious sophistry to seek to separate 
them. A sufficient code of morals must contain ade- 
quate provision for bodily health as well as guidance 
for spiritual welfare. 

1 T J? 6 r pirit of today ' the modern Zeitgeist, is calling 
loudly for shorter hours of labor, higher wages and 
more numerous holidays for the people. America is 
improving greatly in consequence of the attention now 
being paid to reasonable demands made by the toiling 
multitudes that they shall be treated as human beings 
in the fullest sense of the word, not merely as "factory 
hands or automatic pieces of living machinery, to be 
treated as though they had neither mind nor feeling. 

The better treatment of animals, everywhere called 
tor, is another sign of the growing civilization of the 
times, and it is extremely interesting to note that the 
humanest measures called for today, are in exact accord 
with the noblest precepts to be found in ancient books 
of legislation. No one can toil incessantly week in 
and week out, without paying the penalty in mental and 
physical degeneration, and it is surely wretched econ- 
omy to wear out unnecessarily the machinery essential 
to the carrying out of the work to which one is devoting 
ones constant energies. The great blessing of a 
public rest and recreation day is that it stops the whirr 



62 



and buzz of machinery, and gives the people en masse 
an opportunity to enjoy their rest together. 

We fully support conscientious Jews, Seventh- 
day Adventists, and all others who insist that they have 
a right to rest on Saturday and work on Sunday, be- 
cause they believe that God commanded the seventh, 
not the first day of the week to be kept holy; but it is 
certainly desirable in the interest of the nerves of the 
general public that as much be done as possible to keep 
one day out of seven entirely restful. 

In a Jewish community, or in any district where a 
majority of citizens wish to observe the seventh day 
rather than the first, provision should be made for their 
convenience; but in neighborhoods where a large 
majority wish to observe the first day, those who keep 
the seventh should refrain from so transacting their 
business on the first day as to interfere with the repose 
of those around them. 

It probably makes no difference whatever, to health 
or morals, whether Saturday, Sunday or any other one 
day out of seven is observed as the Sabbath day, but 
a rest and recreation day every week is a psycho- 
physiological desideratum. Sabbath-keeping need not 
include definite religious observances ; quiet picnics and 
excursions of various healthful and recreative kinds 
are not properly classifiable as Sabbath-breaking. 

Rest is what toilers need, and as rest is not idleness, 
it is not easy to answer off-hand any question pertain- 
ing to the special feature which Sabbath observance 
should assume on behalf of peculiar temperaments. 
Church-going people number among them resters and 
non-resters, for what is rest to one person is by no 
means rest to another of different temperament and op- 
posite requirements. 

To some people two sessions of Sunday-school and 
two church services will constitute means of rest as 
well as of grace; while to other members of the same 
family the chief Sabbath blessing is the opportunity 
afforded by the rest-day for remaining in bed all the 
morning and taking the remainder of the day very 
quietly in privacy or in the open air. 

A lady of our acquaintance actively employed in busi- 
ness as stenographer and typewriter in a public office 
every working-day, declared that she enjoyed absolute 
rest on Sundays, though she was a church singer and a 
Sunday school teacher. This lady went to her Sunday 
school at 9:30 a. m., and immediately after its session 
entered the church edifice and took her place in the 
choir for the 11 o'clock service. At 2:30 she conduct- 
ed a Bible class in the school room, and at 7 o'clock 



63 



she was again in the church choir for evening service. 
Here was active (not passive) participation in four 
public services on one day, yet to her that day was one 
of perfect rest and most refreshing tranquility. 
m It seems difficult, at a glance, to see how such occupa- 
tion is consistent with obedience to the letter of a 
command which contains the injunction, "Thou shalt 
do no manner of work," and if it be argued that work 
in that sense means only labor for which people receive 
wordly compensation, then all Jewish and Christian 
ministers and professional singers, who -receive salaries 
for services rendered on Sabbaths, are under condem- 
nation. 

To the conservative Jew, who has no loophole of es- 
cape like that of the Christian who says that Christ did 
away with the letter of the law of Moses, the syna- 
gogue services on Sabbaths and Festivals which give 
employment to professional cantors and preachers must 
present an enigma, unless the "sea of the Talmud" 
contains minute explanations of how such work is 
compatible with doing no manner of labor. We can 
see an inkling of an explanation if the technical line 
is drawn sharply between work and labor, and again if 
a distinction is made by casuists between necessary and 
unnecessary occupation; but until we have left all 
bondage to the letter, and breathed the free spirit of 
the Commandments, we must have recourse to be- 
wildering casuistries and be often caught in a net of our 
own casuistical spinning. 

It is the spirit of the Sabbath law which needs 
discovery, and that spirit is the spirit of most glorious 
liberty. The Sabbath is not a prohibition, but a privi- 
lege; not a burden, but a delight; not a debt man owes 
to his Creator, but a provision for his own well being. 
It is the monotony of toil which constitutes its greatest 
burden, and let the ignorant and the deluded say what 
they may to the contrary, periodic rest is conducive to 
the greatest freshness of brain and efficiency of mechani- 
cal execution. 

Whenever we are kept too long and closely at any 
occupation we become dulled and incapable of our best 
exertion. Monday's work is often the best work done 
throughout the week, and so is the work done on the 
day following any public holiday, providing that holi- 
day has been rationally celebrated. 

Our protests against Sabbath desecration do not, by 
any means, begin and end with condemnation of such 
lawlessness as leads to open violation of a day's acknowl- 
edged sanctity. The day following the Sabbath is 
its testing day. How do you feel after your day of 



64 



rest ? How well equipped are you for the work to 
which you should go willingly, with glad alacrity, 
with firmer hand, with steadier nerve, with clearer eye, 
because of your Sabbath-keeping? To many workers 
in great cities a trip to the country, or to the seashore 
is far better than confinement in a crowded meeting 
house. 

We are not always in the humor for hymns and ser- 
mons; we do not always need lectures upon ethics or 
Bible exposition. Nature in her own sweet free way 
spoke to Thoreau and to many other poet-artists as no 
church or chapel ever spoke to them. Wordsworth 
could never have been inspired to write his sweetest 
sonnets by the pews and pulpit of a •conventicle. All 
things have their use, their place, their time, but no one 
thing must be so exalted as to lead to undervaluing 
of something else which is at least equally valuable. 

The Decalogue is synthetic. It says, "Thou shalt 
rest." You must discover for yourself how best to 
rest and not enforce your rules of rest upon your 
neighbors. With some people church-going is a fad, 
a fashion; with others it is an irksome task exacted of 
them, not so much by God as by "Mrs. Grundy." 
Church attendance which is little more than fashionable 
Sunday dress parade is nine-tenths mummery, and it 
often does more to stifle than to encourage spiritual 
aspirations. A Sabbath to be such in reality must be 
a day of rest and gladness, such a day that at its close 
one can sing hopefully of the blessed time and state, 
"Where congregations ne'er break up, 
And Sabbaths have no end," 
a statement which has often conveyed to childish minds 
a vision of terror in place of delight, when used to 
define a prospect of life in the everlasting conditions 
of the spiritual universe. 

Though the Sabbath law of the ancient Jew was a 
merciful provision for human welfare, and contained 
within it the seed of a far higher civilization than that 
of the nomads — to whom tradition says it was present- 
ed by Moses as one of the commandments of the Most 
High — it would be a low and poor interpretation of the 
spirit of the Fourth Commandment, which should begin 
and end with dissertation concerning literal Sabbath 
observances only. 

Agricultural interests are wisely looked after by the 
Sabbatic year as much as personal and animal welfare 
is provided for by the weekly rest-day ; but the "seventh 
day" looms large before us in its deeper meanings as 
the state which will be ours when we are fully re- 
generated. The soul works for six days or periods 



65 

on its road to a perfected consciousness of what is in- 
volved within it. These six stages of evolutionary 
development are consummated in the seventh period, 
when Christ within appears as Lord of the seventh 
day. At that point history is entirely transcended and 
the mystic philosopher, rather than the historian, must 
take up his parable and give to the waiting multitude 
an exposition of the inner meaning of the Sabbath law. 
it is to Jacob Boehme and such divinely illumined 
philosophers, rather than to literalists and legalists, that 
we must turn for the most helpful renderings of re- 
generation The third chapter of the fourth gospel 
records that Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Art thou a mas- 
ter m Israel, and knowest not these things?" during 
a sublime discourse upon second birth— birth from above 
and from within, which signifies discerning of spiritual 
realities. 

. We are not born in total depravity, but we are born 
into material environments which, as Wordsworth poet- 
ically tells us in his "Ode to Immortality," prevent the 
growing boy from continuing to enjoy glimpses of that 
heaven which "lies about us in our infancy." 

As long as we continue exclusively devoted to things 
ol the material world we are unaware of our interior 
spiritual possessions, we remain simply unconscious of 
our celestial inheritance. We are sons of God but 
we do not know it. Conversion (from the latin 
converter e, to turn around) is to face in a new direc- 
tion. It is the introductory step in the regenerating 
life— a new conception, to be followed in logical se- 
quence by a new gestation, a new birth, a new infancy, 
a new childhood, a new adolescence, and eventually a 
new maturity. This is the new spiritual manhood when 
Christ within, the hope of glory," will be outwardly 
revealed, and we shall stand face to face with eternal 
realities, like eagles gazing into the sun's countenance 
no longer like bats and owls, blinking like the Children 
of Israel when Moses was urged by the people to cover 
his face because of its great brilliance when he had 
descended from the Mount. 

Have we not caught while uttering these sentences 
some idea of the "week" of regeneration, its six work- 
ing days, and its Sabbath of delight at the close? Let 
us see how the scale runs and how the colors of the 
tfow of Promise, God's rainbow sign, are typical of 
S ° W ? l nt 2; lor ex Pfnences. Here is a seven- 
fold scale both natural and spiritual, exoteric and 
esoteric, which is at least worthy of attentive considera- 



66 

First Day— Note A. Color Red. 

Period of Conversion or new conception. 

Second Day— Note B. Color Orange. 
Period of new Gestation. 

Third Day— Note C. Color Yellow. 
Period of New Birth. 

Fourth Day— Note D. Color Green. 
Period of New Infancy. 

Fifth Day— Note E. Color Blue. 
Period of New Childhood. 

Sixth Day— Note F. Color Indigo. > 
Period of New Adolescence or spiritual Puberty. 

Seventh Day— Note G. Color Violet. 
Period of New Maturity. 

The scale of seven is so universally manifest m 
Nature that it is impossible for any intelligent student of 
natural phenomena to ignore the significance of this 
remarkable numeral. That most wonderful of . all 
books of the Bible, the Apocalypse or Revelation, 
which lays such stress on seven is surely a Masonic 
document, the inner meaning of whose hieroglyphics 
only those initiated into the deeper mysteries of Ma- 
sonry can unveil. 

The seven spirits of God, the seven 
golden candlesticks, the seven seals of the 
sacred book, which only the Lamb can break, these and 
all other references to seven coupled with the statement 
that the number of the Beast is 666, (denoting physical, 
mental and moral incompleteness), and the many ref- 
erences to twelve and its multiples, clearly convince the 
esoteric student that the author of that amazing docu- 
ment was a profound spiritually inspired mathematician, 
one who strangely echoed the grand saying of Plato, 
"God geometrizes." 

The Fourth Commandment grows upon us and opens 
up before our wondering vision endless vistas, across 
which no finite eye can fully peer. We begin with a 
rest day once a week, on which cattle as well as servants 
and children are to enjoy repose, and soon we are ask- 
ing the meaning of God's rainbow which all souls 
must cross to reach Valhalla, the Scandinavian's mytho- 
logic paradise. . . 

Doubtless when we come to keep our mystic inward 
Sabbath and understand experimentally the significance 
of our own regeneration, we shall no longer _ need 
those outward institutions which are still essential to 
our welfare. But let no iconoclast imagine that Nature s 
way is a path of destruction or demolition. We can- 
not liberate birds by smashing eggshells, nor can we 

emancipate butterflies by rending the cocoon or chrysa- 



67 



friction °Luu Ach Cach must . m ^e its own way by 
triction neither can we attain to a higher order of 

inner^ - SSaili ? g S^ 1 ^ ° f a —mit t 
inner meaning of which is certain in due course to 
open up its interior reality, when we are ready fo? 

I^Ste^ th ° Se WhiCh ° Ur ^ 

,u7rnLn eT l la T S With Wh l ch Le ^tical injunction 
surrounded the observances of the Sabbath are cer- 
tainly no part of the Smaitic precept. Multiplied tra- 
ditions have tended to "make the law of none effect " 
wV? C h PGtty le F is . Iative enactments have been at 
"hlrdnts o~ " datl ° nS t0 hUman WeakneSS and 

To stone a man for picking up stones on the Sab- 
bath is no more a divine command than to stone to 
death an adulteress The conduct of Jesus with Mary of 
Magdala should have settled the literal controversy 
w7^ ?r ? fe?SCdIy CI l ristia P circle s- Stones and rocks 
hi, ™ P m ? en °I m u eamn ^ but the superficial legalist 
in tZ 2 e *° r t the beauty of a similitude, and no ear 

t th a ™f£ °J a » ins P lr ^d poem, so he hurls a literal 
mnt at the head of an offender, and while eno- aff ed in 
merciless persecution, persuades himself t& he s 
doing God service. 

w fe J? as no Y° rd , ° f a PP roval and scarcely a 
hill w ° f , excus / f ° r those relentless persecutors who 
have blasphemed the name of the Almighty, while 
to'fe V / n ~ u P° n *e heads of alf who dare 
uuJ^- ? m ^ even in the matter of the pro- 
nunciation of such a word as shibboleth, or sibboleth 
concerning which controversies waxed high and raged 
tumultously among fanatics of antiquity g 
Th» Jr ?a i yS the gospel concerning the Sabbath law? 
The disciples of Jesus do many seemingly illegal acts 
for which their Master refuses to rebuke them His 
sweeping asservation, sublime in its magnificent in- 

manloTthe WaS made for ma * ^ 

man for the Sabbath," covers the whole territory of 

eat^and 011 , V't* T they h ave a right to 

eat, and even the shew-bread in the temple is none too 

! C ;i h r gh 11 V S th ^ Priest's portion" for the ideal 
m Israel has ever been "a nation of priests," therefore 

Isril\ltZ t a PHeStIeSS nati ° n [t is the boast Sf 

anSr rt g rf aTl l k° fuIfi J ment s look like disappear- 
ances. There will be no educated class in a day when 
every citizen is educated. The high-caste Brahman wih 

equa? ThtVnrT^ a ? men are ^nowledged 

equal. 1 he Lords day will no longer be a seventh por- 



68 



tion of time when all time is fully consecrated to sweet 
and loving service. In the New Jerusalem estate there 
will be no specially holy places for the whole earth 
will be sanctified. No more will the oasis be con- 
spicuous when the whole region, which was once a 
desert, shall blossom with the lily and the rose. 

The holy day, as one day contrasted with six unholy 
days, will be known no more when the Golden Age 
shall have come and the Messianic prophecies shall be 
completely fulfilled. The weekly rest-day is both a 
concession to mortal weakness and a ladder between 
earth and heaven, up which the toiling masses of 
humanity can, step by step, approach a summit of 
attainment where work and rest shall have grown syn- 
onymous. 

A stated Sabbath suggests relief from toil, a breathing- 
space, a vacation time, an opportunity to become better 
acquainted with home and garden, with choice litera- 
ture, with high art and with all that lifts our thoughts 
above the commonplace. 

What grand opportunities are often missed on Sun- 
days ! In the summer season crowds visit the parks 
and the seashore, and disport themselves upon the grass 
under kindly shade trees; but in winter when the 
climate in many districts peremptorily forbids much 
out door recreation, the hours of Sabbath— be it Satur- 
day or Sunday, matters not— are too often wasted or 
worse than wasted. Religious services should be 
bright and inspiring and all sermons should give hope 
ana* encouragement to the toilers who need help rather 
than condemnation. Home life on all holidays should 
be especially charming, quiet, picturesque, cheery, and 
all else that is necessary to make "home, sweet home 
something more practically real than a _ beautiful phrase 
in a sentimental ballad. 

Sunday should be the brightest day in all the week for 
children. Toys should never be forbidden, picture 
books should never be under the ban, dolls should never 
be banished on the eve of a Sabbath. At the same time 
it should be the chief aim of all homemakers (God 
grant us many such in place of simply housekeepers ) to 
so interweave the golden thread of ethical instruction 
with whatever is amusing and delightsome m to the 
juvenile members of a household, that religious in- 
struction shall be gently insinuated rather than 
abruptly segregated from the common mass of every 
day instruction. 

On one day out of seven there should be a respite 
from the ordinary course of business ; account books and 
ledgers have no place, neither have school books on a 



69 

vacation day. Sunday newspapers are a doubtful benefit, 
bucn excellent Saturday evening papers as the Boston 
Iranscnpt, and many others which could easily be men- 
tioned, contain much that is well adapted for Sunday 
reading, and even all Sunday newspapers contain much 
that is useful as well as entertaining. 

But what is needed more than anything else by most 
working people (and there should be no idlers) is 
recreation, change of thought. and employment, and this 
is not secured on any holiday if we drag into it the 
concerns and enterprises of every common day 

One day out of every ten for periodic rest was tried 
at the time of the French Revolution, now considerably 
more than a century ago, and it was found that such a 
division of time proved a failure. Call us con- 
TJ7^ vu d y ° U ^ lU ' but we do dare in this neurotic 
nf o c i? ?u T Y Sl Ce and cry out for a better observance 
ot a Sabbath. We say nothing dictatorial about church 



u-u-i — j- J " WL111 V& uicLcuunai aDout cnurcn 
going, bible reading, or devotional exercises of any sort 
because we leave it to each one to be fully persuaded 

SJj* ? T mmd as / e ? ards a " distinctly religious or 
theological aspects of observance, but we do desire in 
clarion tones to trumpet forth the word which falls from 
today s hygienic Sinai, "thou shalt rest " 

Rest means brain and body salvation, better qualifi- 
cation for rendering noble service in the community 
wherever and however we may be situated. Rest not 

i^T' - n °l rl agn ^ ti0n J but nation; moral, mental 
and physical liberation from the incessant grind of busi- 
ness and domestic servitude is today's most urgent need 
™w P y ° Ur r 5 St day , as h seem eth best unto you, but 
whatever you do or leave undone on the one day out 

win 6 !™' 1Ct be ltS keynote ' and the othe ^ six days 
Stivity W neSS y ° Ur n ° bIer ' happier and h ^lthier 

LECTURE SIX. 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 
"Honor thy father and thy mother." 
In this commandment we have the most positive tes- 
timony to the divine idea of the perfect equality of man 
and woman to be found in any ancient literature The 
creation story in the first chapter of Genesis tells us 

mia?tTf e thf D rh °l 0d End ^herhood, and here in tSe 
midst of the Decalogue we have a plain direction to 
pay equal honor to our fathers and to our mothers 

though preachers have often opposed all movements 
looking toward the political equality oT The 



yo 



sexes, on the score of loyalty to the Bible, and those 
who never miss an opportunity to attack the venerable 
Book have joined in the pernicious statement that the 
Bible teaches the inequality of the sexes, we ask any 
reader who may be a novice in theology to put the 
obvious interpretation upon Genesis 1 : 26, 27, 28, before 
passing to further consideration of the text of Exodus. 

Get some old bibles and cut out the first chapter of 
Genesis, which properly ends with the first verse of the 
second chapter, then ask your children, one by one, to 
give their ideas of what this story teaches con- 
cerning the position of the sexes. People foolishly 
begin to study human history somewhere in the second 
chapter of Genesis, totally ignoring the first chapter, 
consequently their ethnology and theology are equally 
at fault. 

What, think you, mean these words m the first chapter 
of the first book of the Pentateuch? "So God created 
man (humankind) in His image, in the image of God 
created He them; male and female created He them. 
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be 
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and sub- 
due it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing 
that moveth upon the earth." Such is the text of the 
well-known King James version of the Bible, from 
which most of the passages have been taken which have 
been used to enforce the ridiculous and hateful dogma 
that woman is only God's afterthought, and was created 
as a mere appendage to the masculine half of humanity. 

The Bible is not responsible for the brutality that 
unduly venerates man and heaps contempt on woman, 
and it ill becomes those who pose as scholars to repeat 
the silly blunders and obvious misquotations and mis- 
constructions of those blind obstructionists who read 
their own stupidity into the biblical text by refusing to 
study the Pentateuch as a continuous narrative. 

Say nothing about Adam and Eve, the serpent, and 
other characters in the Eden allegory till you have read 
and, as far as possible, mastered the preceding narrative 
which declares that humanity is in Elohim's image, and 
that "Ish" and "Isha" alike proceed from the Divine 
creative fiat. 

God is our father and our mother ; we are all brothers 
and sisters. Woe be unto us if we eclipse the divine 
motherhood and thus sin against the Holy Spirit, 
Theosophia, the Divine Feminine. The original con- 
ception of the Trinity has been completely obscured by 
Christian theologians who have discarded the divine 



7i 



motherhood. God is our Father and our Mother: 
the Logos is Divine Offspring. 

Father, Mother and Child are the best terms in which 
the threefold expression of the one Deity can be re- 
vealed to human consciousness. God is our Parent. 
We have all one life, we are all partakers of one 
bounty; we live, move/ and have our being in a 
universe governed by one law and ever giving evidence 
of one immutable order. 

On being asked to quote a single text from the old 
Testament, outside the much disputed first chap- 
ter of Genesis which proclaims the equal dignity of 
man and woman, we unhesitatingly reply, "Honor thy 
father and thy mother." No greater honor is demand- 
ed for one than for the other. What shall be said of 
those blind leaders of the blind, who, clad in sacerdotal 
vestments, or robed in the black cloth of the ministerial 
profession, tell their benighted congregations that God 
is our father, but not our mother. To all such the 
query to propound is, Where are your proofs of man's 
superior sanctity! To all such misguided teachers we 
have only the query to propound, Where are your proofs, 
Oh men of darkened understanding and misleading 
words wherewith you betray the divine feminine, that 
your fathers are purer than your mothers, your brothers 
more chaste than your sisters, your sons more righteous 
than your daughters? 

This is a modern question indeed, but Sinai settled 
it, as it settled many another problem with which we 
are now wrestling, ages before the present generation 
ot men and women came upon the stage of earth's ex- 
perience—ground to solve for themselves, what no others 
can solve for them, the mighty problem of human life, 
its object and its destiny. 

When the children of Israel are leaving Egypt thev 
must have the aid of Miriam, the sister of Moses, or they 
nn n t° ^ lver ;d.and it is her song that urges them 
on in the time of their greatest difficulty, and inspires 
them with new hope and indomitable courage when 
their spirit has well nigh fainted within them. The 
nam l °J ^ iam means resist ance, and the record tells 
us that Miriam resisted Moses for a while, and she 
was stricken with leprosy, but though she was in the 
wrong to contend against her brother, the people could 
^ g V°/u ard , Untl1 ? he had been rest °red to health 
tnl Un r^n h ^ fo IE e W L th , that of the brother whom she 

SlL /l P —' th0Ugh ,- for a brief seas °* she had 
resented his wise counselings. 

God is no respecter of persons. If a man sin, or 

if a woman sin, the fruit of sin is in every case re- 



72 



demptive penalty. Miriam is afflicted and set without 
the camp until she has come to reason wisely, then she 
is re-admitted to the convocation and becomes a bright 
and worthy factor in working out the deliverance of a 
people. When Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, sins, 
leprosy overtakes him, and Naaman, the Syrian captain 
who has been long afflicted with that terrible disorder, 
must wash seven times in the mystic Jordan, i e., he 
must entirely cleanse himself from all defilements in 
order to be healed. A prophet can point the_way, but 
like all modern teachers he cannot heal another man ; 
Elisha can but show a sufferer who applies to him the 
way of release from error and its consequences. 

In these incidents we see that man and woman are 
alike worthy and responsible in the sight of Heaven. 
There are no two laws, no double standard of morality ; 
for as man and woman must be esteemed and honored 
together, so if they transgress must they be punished 
that they may be reformed together. There is no sickly 
sentimentalism in the Decalogue, no cheap gallantry or 
specious chivalry or aught else that demeans while it 
pretends to honor, and degrades while it makes believe 
to elevate. It is not reverence for God but dependence 
on brute force, and that alone, which points the en- 
venomed arrow, which worshippers of muscle rather 
than of spirit ever seek to thrust into an assemblage of 
honest self-respecting women. 

Professor Harry Thurston Peck in the Cosmopolitan 
magazine (June 1899) betrayed the entire animus of the 
social and political inequality movement. "The last ap- 
peal is always to force," says he, and in^ the following 
words says all that can be said for man's superiority. 
"He has the physical power to work his will, and this 
alone is a lasting badge of superiority." Are these the 
sentiments which rule the pulpit, as well as the ex- 
clusively masculine university? If so, let us cry, 
"Down with the pulpit," for if such be its voice, God 
is excluded and cruel, relentless, pitiless energy is sub- 
stituted for Divine love and wisdom. 

The world has known both patriarchal and matriarch- 
al governments, but neither has proved worthy to sur- 
vive. Some modern agitators have extolled woman and 
condemned man, but they have come no nearer to truth 
than those force-worshipers who adore masculine brav- 
ery and appeal to brute strength as the supreme energy, 
The Decalogue is balanced in its wisdom; it goes into 
homelife; it addresses the children individually, and 
says to every boy and to every girl in the household, 
Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. 



73 

The Fifth Commandment has quite as much message 
for adults as for infants. It says to husband and wife, 
there must be equal respect, honor, rights and privi- 
leges. You, sir, are no nearer to God than your wife 
and you, madam, are no diviner than your husband' 
If one is in God's image, so is the other; your 
interests are one, you must honor, respect, love and 
cherish one another. God's sanction rests on no mar- 
riage service which contains the word "obey" in one 
place, while it would not tolerate it in the other. Framers 
of some marriage services have known Paul only at his 
worst and his feeblest; they have not known Moses 
and surely they have not known Jesus. 

Women preachers are an offense to presumptuous 
sacerdotalism, but Jesus commissioned a woman to in- 
form Feter ^as well as the other disciples that he had 
risen and had appeared in the early morning to the 
faithful watchers by the sepulchre. Take the four 
gospels to pieces as you will, and we challenge you 
to find a single word or act attributed to Jesus which 
exalts man over woman. To women he spake of the 
mysteries of the heavenly kingdom, he pleaded their 
cause when men unfairly accused them of participation 
in crimes which mem had instigated, and never did he 
S th , e j 5 h * htest r ? s Pect for that vitiated ceremonialism 
which led at length to the incorporation into Jewish 
" +h!L 1 n ™ a ^ n ° J St tC ? alIy dis ^rded ejaculation, 
JnJSn" theC ' ° h God ' who hast not m *de me a 

W 01113,11. 

Superficialism had so usurped the place of genuine 
religion before that clause entered a prayer book, that 
those who apologize for it today are eager to explain 
that men only publicly give thanks that they belong to 

XlJ e l , C T ble , ° f P e f formin g certain high acts of 
ritual but they do not boast of their moral superiority 
over their sisters. 

Ritualism would be truly beautiful if it did not so 
readily degenerate into idolatry. We are such babes 
even today that we often need the thunder of the com- 
mandment, which for our safe-guarding is still com- 
pelled to read 'Thou shalt not make unto thyself any 
graven image " Aaron and the calf are preferred above 
Moses with the two tables of stone in his hand, but Oh 
ye priest-ridden multitude, remember that Aaron makes 
the calf at your request out of your ear-rings, and then 

MounTTnH iP * a . M0SGS , iS C ° min S down' from tn^ 
Mount today and he will break your idols, and you 
w 11 have to drink a nauseous beverage containing your 
trinkets pulverized. High, pure, noble metaphysical 



74 



propositions are too high for many of us, but we can 
well appreciate ecclesiastical millinery. 

We can see candles, smell incense, hear music, touch 
relics, and taste consecrated bread, but we do^ not aspire 
high enough to commune with a spiritual divinity. The 
craze of today's Spiritualism is materialization, and that 
one phase of modern spiritual phenomena has been more 
than all others the hornet in the Spiritualistic camp. 
Your sorrows are multiplied, oh Spiritualist, in ^these 
transitional days because you have too eagerly sought 
to materialize spirit rather than to spiritualize yourselves 
that you might hold living communion with the realm 
of spirit. Today's locusts are devouring your pasture 
lands, you are pestered with mountebanks and fleeced by 
impostors, and you bring it all upon yourselves in your 
inordinate desire to bring down the spiritual to the 
level of the carnal, instead of elevating the carnal till 
it becomes united with the spiritual. 

God sends the plagues of Egypt, but all plagues are 
educational ; not one is vindictive, not one is purposeless. 
The music of Sinai is a mighty anthem, a matchless 
symphony, a superb oratorio, a cycle of mar- 
velous operas. Who will be the successor 
of Richard Wagner in the field of musi- 
cal composition and take Sinai for a theme, 
and the Decalogue for a libretto? It is a bold proposi- 
tion, but as the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau in 
Germany has never been irreverent, so at Beyreuth we 
may yet witness a music drama with God's representa- 
tive in the title role. All depends upon the treatment 
of the theme, whether it be awe-inspiring and uplifting 
or whether" it be an offensive blasphemy. An inspired 
musician may arise to give such sublimity to the scene 
that the theatre shall become a veritable temple. It is 
very easy to travesty the Commandments and to make 
of a benism precept a stumbling-block in the way of 
youth, but let us seek to wisely elucidate them. Again 
and again have ignorant, selfish and domineering parents 
turned to the Fifth Commandment to justify their un- 
reasonable exactions ; conseauently there have arisen as- 
sailants of the Decalogue who have based their assaults 
upon the misconduct of their own harsh and sometimes 
besotted parents. We need not wonder at Ingersoirs lec- 
ture on "Liberty for Man, Woman and Child," in the 
light of many recent experiences of parental cruelty and 
injustice, and as the Decalogue is a unit — one com- 
mandment fitting into the other so that no one of the 
ten can be logically separated from its companions- 
it is quite as much in accord with the spirit of this 
august revelation to thunder in the ears of parents 



75 



"make yourselves honorable," as to cry unto the chil- 
dren, "honor your parents." 

That is a great saying in Proverbs, "Train up a child 
in the way he should go." All the utterances of wise 
men of old in the same marvelous collection of im- 
pressive sayings concerning the "rod" of correction and 
chastisement, and all else that sounds harsh (if you read 
harshness into it out of your own harsh feelings) are 
just, wise, loving, and merciful if you do but let the 
spirit of sound counsel percolate through the sometimes 
dubious vernacular in which ancient thought is dressed. 

Parents, you love your children, and you seek their 
highest welfare or you are not worthy to be their 
guardians and trainers. Every child is an individual 
and as such must be respected; yea, the Decalogue calls 
upon him to worship God, and only to do you honor, 
therefore his first duty is to conscience, to conviction, 
and he is to be commended if when you tell him to 
outrage his moral sense, to tell falsehoods for you, to 
be mean, tricky, and dishonest in your selfish interest 
he turns sorrowfully but firmly from you, saying, "I 
cannot and I will not obey such an unrighteous order." 
You take the name of God in vain, you blaspheme the 
Decalogue and call down upon yourselves the retributive 
justice of the Most High when you box the ears of a 
child and flog him with a rod pickled in your own 
fiendishness, when you incarcerate your offspring in 
a dark closet or in a solitary garret with rats for com- 
panions, and for a pretense make long prayers which 
shall tend to your extremest condemnation. 

We need "agnostics" oftentmes to expose our hideous 
hypocrisies, and avowed "infidels" to call us to faith in 
God and the practice of righteousness. Pope Leo XIII 
told some of his cardinals that the great French 
sceptic, Ernest Renan, may have been b.' scourge in 
God's hand to lash the church into piety, seeing how 
far it had departed from its original integrity. 

To the orthodox Christian world, we say unhesitating- 
ly, Robert Ingersoll was one of God's hornets, and it has 
been all in vain that the pulpit has ranted and bullied 
and anathematized the arch-heretic whose very buf- 
foonery was sometimes necessary to lacerate professing 
Christendom and call as with a hornet's sting a recreant 
institution to repentance. 

Between Heron and Ingersoll supercilious kid-glove 
churchiamty has suffered greviously, and such suffering 
must continue till hypocrisy is destroyed. Sinai's ex- 
terior is all we can see, and its terrific thunderings are 
all we can hear, until we are ready to accompany Moses 
into the Mount, or go with Elijah into the mystic cave. 



76 

Then when the storm has ceased and all elemental agita- 
tion has subsided, there will be heard a "still small 
voice," and that is the whisper from Mount Zion, the 
abode of beloved holiness. 

Zion is within Sinai as the kernel is within the nut- 
shell. Let us pray and work that we may deserve to 
hold in our hands heaven's nutcrackers. Then shall 
the literal shell drop away, and the sweetness and 
nutritiveness of the inmost meat of the nut be prepared 
for our continual delectation. 

No parents like disrespect. Certainly they feel shocked 
and horrified when a little fellow standing in a window 
doubles up his fists, and turning to a visitor in the 
room says menacingly, concerning his departing parents 
riding off without him in a carriage, "There go the 
biggest pair of liars in town." Ingersoll counselled no 
disobedience, nor did he attack the Decalogue at any 
point when he related that appalling anecdote of a disap- 
pointed angry child who had been promised a ride and 
then left behind while his forgetful, selfish father and 
mother went out driving without him, leaving him to 
entertain a guest with a record of their mendacity. What 
humbug it is to ask a child to obey the Fifth Command- 
ment when you are outraging the ninth. "Thou shalt 
not bear false witness" means nothing if it does not 
teach that to tell the truth is necessary to salvation. 

No liar can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven ; there- 
fore as long as you tell falsehoods you are outside the 
celestial gates. Discord, ill will, deception, rebellion, and 
a host of ugly unclean demons infest those homes where 
obedience to parental rule is called for, but where that 
rule is a rule of wrong, not of right ; of partiality, not of 
equity. 

How much afraid many people are of anarchy; in 
what terror do they stand of the violence of an infur- 
iated mob. But there would be no anarchists if the law 
had at all times been equitably and amicably adminis- 
tered. 

Nihilism in Russia has been the bitter fruit on the 
corrupt tree of gross injustice. The present Czar, Nich- 
olas II, is no doubt doing all he can to induce a better 
state of things in his wide dominions. Though we re- 
joice in the new prospects opening up for the Slavic 
race, and can see a glorious future for Siberia, we can- 
not expect that in a few brief terrestrial days a vast 
empire will be entirely reconstructed, though irapid 
improvements are even now in progress. 

We have had patriarchates and matriarchates ; the 
world has deified man and dishonored woman, and then 
turned around and glorified woman while accomplishing 



77 

man'§ humiliation; but there will be no peace, order, har- 
mony nor equity, until man and woman reign together 
and the question of social and political equality is for- 
ever settled on the firm foundation of the first chapter 
of Genesis, and the teaching of the Ten Commandments. 

England was richly blessed for considerably more than 
sixty years by having for its queen a woman whose mar- 
ried life was a heavenly poem, and whose influence upon 
the home life of multitudes has been that of a' minister- 
ing archangel. When a married man calls himself the 
entire head of the house, he is a poor half-headed luna- 
U f' u Husband and wife together constitute the head 
of the household; man and woman are co-equivalent 
co-equals, one is not a whit higher in the scale of life 
than the other. 

Ignorant priests can quote Paul's weakest, darkest 
utterances, and not even interpret those in the light of 
the times and circumstances in and for which they were 
written ; but great prophets with bald heads and mighty 
mantles, like Elijah and Elisha, without a vestige of 
sacerdotal assumptiveness, pronounce man and woman 
divinely constituted equivalents. 

There is a strange beauty, a deathless fascination, in 
all fine portraits of the Madonna and the Holy Infant 
Art today is far more to the front than fifty years ago • 
every home almost has now its copy of the Sistine 
Madonna, the Madonna of the Chair, or some other 
masterpiece of Raphael or one of the other immortal 
painters who have made womanhood appear divine on 
canvas. It is not idolatry to revere the beautiful and 
bow respectfully before the effigy of what is essentially 
divine. ■ 

Children must be reached through Kindergarten meth- 
ods of instruction, and childlike adults must have picto- 
rial suggestions furnished them according to their needs. 
That extreme reactionary Puritanism which delighted 
m iconoclasm, and broke in pieces all fine carved 
work with axes and hammers, was not penetrated with 
the spirit of the gospel of beauty, righteousness and love. 

There is genuine gospel in Hawthorne's "Scarlet Let- 
ter," but not in the action of the relentless persecutors 
ot an unhappy woman and her guiltless child. We 
approach a delicate subject when we mention illegitimate 
children, and we must not think lightly of any attempts 
to safeguard home-life against the wily, treacherous in- 
trusions of the execrable adulterer, but we cannot purify 
society by undue severity, we cannot prevent the 
re-commission of heinous crimes by lynching Negro 
offenders, nor has capital punishment in any of its bar- 



78 



baric (or seemingly refined) shapes lifted humanity 
above murder or murder would not be rife today. 

Suggestions to evil are made by portraits of evil; 
where all harsh measures fail, the law of loving-kindness 
proves a great success. You are parents, or you may 
stand in the relation of guardians to orphaned or aban- 
doned children. You teach those children the Ten Com- 
mandments, and call their especial attention to the Fifth. 
Your duty is by no means finished ; it has scarcely 
begun. Every command from Heaven is a two-edged 
sword, cutting both ways. If this Commandment casti- 
gates the child who disobeys, it yet more terribly 
afflicts the parent who is the author of the disobedience. 

Filial devotion there cannot be, where parental respon- 
sibility and respectability are unacknowledged. People 
have travestied this Fifth Commandment shamefully, 
for they have read it as though it were a chord of ven- 
geance ; they have hissed it forth as though it were a 
fierce anathema hurled against all disobedient children 
when it is in truth a gracious benedictory assurance to 
the obedient. 

No wonder the Decalogue is picked to pieces by shal- 
low, would-be-higher criticizers in back-alley journalism. 
This Commandment is one of promise ; it seems to have 
been formed out of the tenderness, insight and compas- 
sion of the Most High. Parents, you are summoned to 
the foot of Sinai, and you are often among the quakiest 
of all the tremblers at the base of the burning mount 
You have goaded your children to disobedience and God 
is holding out to them a reward if they will honor you. 

God is a parent. The fatherly and motherly instincts 
of the Eternal are breathing through the stone tables 
which transfigured Moses holds in his steady grasp 
while you are shaking like aspen leaves; you bow your 
faces in your hands, and hide your eyes for very shame 
lest your children should see your tears when the Fifth 
Word is addressed to them, and the voice of the law- 
proclaimer rises in tones of inexpressible sweetness, 
"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be 
long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." If 
your children honor you, God will bless them, and crown 
them with long life and prosperity in a goodly land flow- 
ing with milk and honey. It is hard to obey you, you 
are so inconsistent. Papa allows what mamma forbids, 
and both parents are petulant and contradictory and 
unreasonable oftentimes. Children suffer many things at 
the hands of parents, and alas! there are unwelcome 
children in the world and our hearts must bleed for 
them. You have no right to tell a child not to ask Ques- 
tions, to do your bidding in all things, to be tamely sub- 



79 



missive to your every just or unjust command. Sinai 
whispers to your children, and implores them to do you 
honor, and promises them a prize if they are respectful, 
but Sinai's thunder is for the unjust, untruthful., unlov- 
ing parent, and for the unrighteous -children also, for 
there is no distinction of age, sex, race, or color in the 
presence of divine legislation. 

Science is God's handmaiden. Every discovery of im- 
mutable law, of inexorable order, is but a new proof of 
the inflexibility of the divine decrees ; pitiable, indeed, is 
the plight of those who see only the natural Sinai, and 
know nothing of the spiritual Zion which is within it. 

There is no respect of persons with God, there is none 
with Nature. There is no variableness or shadow cast 
by turning with the Almighty; there is none with that 
Natural Law which marks the incessant operation of 
Herbert Spencer's "Eternal Energy." Quibble about 
terms and dispute over authenticities if you are pedantic 
enough, but sceptics all believe at last when they are 
confronted with inexorable Sinai revealed in Nature. 

All philosophers believe in Power, Force, 
Energy; how many believe that power is Love, that 
force is Goodness, that energy is Beneficence? There 
is a reward for righteousness as well as a penalty for 
iniquity. We have heard many thunders, now we must 
listen to whispers ; the "still small voice" — is the only 
direct voice of the Almighty. Noise is not music, but it 
is an introduction to music, The sounding of the trum- 
pet, the blast of the ram's horn, and the voice growing 
louder and louder has more than one significance. 

Have you marked, as we have proceeded along a wind- 
ing path in the vicinity of Sinai, that the echoes of the 
divine tones from the speaking mountain have become 
clearer and clearer, up till now, when we are told of 
prosperity and longevity as consequences of keeping 
inviolate a holy precept? All parents are not harsh; 
all commands are not grievous ; many there are who 
have learned the wisdom in the old song, 
"Speak gently, it is better far 
To rule by love than fear." 
There is great encouragement for all who are 
afflicted with rebellious children. You are good-meaning 
people, but you have mistaken the wrong for the right 
tone in addressing your offspring. You have threatened 
where God promises, you have been too solicitous for 
the letter of your law, for literal conformity with your 
outward wishes, when God says, "Son, give Me thy 
heart." All the mistakes attributable solely to misun- 
derstanding of the right method to adopt in reaching 
the young, would, if piled skyward, make a mountain 



8o 



tall enough to obscure the heavens from the sight of the 
whole earth. 

The story of the prodigal is suggested in the Fifth 
Commandment. A certain man has two sons, one re- 
mains at home and gives him no trouble, the other 
plunges into every abyss of abomination. Do not falter, 
though your son has turned out the vilest wretch in the 
community. Never relax your loving efforts, though his 
crimes are as black as the lowest hell, and have degraded 
him not only below swineherds, but below the hogs in 
the pig-pen. The Father is on the road expecting the 
child to return ; the light is burning in the home window, 
the son's room is always in readiness for his return, for, 
says the Father, "he will assuredly come back." The 
whole book of Jonah is in the story of the prodigal's 
elder brother; the entire life of Jesus is in the father 
who meets his son upon the road. 

Cold-hearted legal calculators object to pardons; 
mumblers of the letter cry shame upon the salvation of 
a man who was once a thief, and is now a sincere peni- 
tent. _ Down with it, down with it, even to the ground ; 
may its name be blotted out and its offspring extermi- 
nated with the birth of the newborn cycle, say we of a 
hideous, heartless cry for vengeance upon a prodigal 
when God has already overwhelmed him with the des- 
titution which works contrition. If we sin, we suffer; 
suffering is sin's inevitable sequence, but why do we 
suffer? _ Not for our damnation, but for our salvation. 
There is no anger in the heavens, no resentment in 
celestial societies, against the victims of self-made hells. 

Be like unto the father in the story of the prodigal; 
let the elder brother be a type you do not intend to imi- 
tate. That elder brother, sleek, smug, self-complacent, 
intensely levitical, and in the worst sense Pharasaic, is 
today's "adder in the path." Rather be "a sweet sinner 
than a sour saint; we can find no just fault with any 
novelist or dramatist who satirizes the unsaintly "sanc- 
tified ones." 

No child is led to righteousness by a birch rod, a 
leather strap or a cat-o-nine-tails. Let God send "hor- 
nets" when they are necessary, but do not let us attempt 
to sting. We have no right to sing, "Where is my 
wandering boy tonight?" with the words unaltered. 
Why^ should you take it for granted, that because your 
son is away from home, he is drinking, gambling or 
carousing? Do not confess other people's sins in pub- 
lic, even if you believe in auricular confession to a 
priest in private. You have a right to confess your own 
misdoings to a fellow-creature, be he priest or layman, 
if you think you can get help from one of larger exper- 



8i 

ience than your own ; but let there be no more gossip- 
ing and tale-bearing and suggesting evil. Love will 
save when slander will plunge a weak brother into 
destruction. Give your children reputations to live up 
to, and when they are in doubt and difficulty, and ply 
you with searching questions, be patient and remember 
the text "Come, let us reason together, saith the Lord." 
Your children are human and so are you, and parents 
are also children ; you have parents of your own. And 
here breaks in another thought— are you honoring your 
parents, while you are demanding of your children that 
they honor you ? Have you shelved and neglected your 
venerable grandparents, have you forgotten to be grate- 
ful to your foster parents or to those who adopted you ? 

We cannot wriggle out of the Commandments. Each 
one is Eden's angel with the flaming sword which turns 
in every direction to guard the way to the Tree of Life 
How multitudinous are the agencies through which truth 
is pouring forth its radiance upon the world today ! We 
commence a discourse at Sinai in Arabia, and we may 
end it in a School of Suggestive Therapeutics in Chi- 
cago. Many physicians and metaphysicians at the pres- 
ent moment are echoing the Decalogue in their class- 
rooms, at their clinics, in their private treatments. 
Child culture is today the most burning of all the fiery 
questions of the age. How shall I touch the depths of 
goodness m a seemingly naughty girl or wayward boy? 
this is the profoundest ethical query which can address 
itself to any age or community. You who are teachers 
must hold out great prospects of attainment in the path 
of virtue; you must make virtue so attractive and de- 
clare it to be so natural (though withal so spiritual) 
that as Socrates told the youth of ancient Greece, virtue 
needs only to be displayed to be loved, worshipped and 
glorified. 

The Fifth Commandment has been called "the first 
commandment with promise." We need not listen to 
any more thundering, we are half way through the 
Decalogue, and we ought now be prepared to hearken to 
the notes of sweet assurance which breathe through all 
those mighty utterances. "Thou shalt not" is more than 
imperative, it is consoling, it is full of unspeakable prom- 
ise. You will not kill, nor steal, nor be impure, nor 
untruthful, nor covetous, for thou shalt henceforth hear 
the voice within thee which says, "My yoke is easy and my 
burden is light." Dwell much, oh teachers, upon the 
beneficial results of a life of virtue. Threaten less and 
promise more. There has been a great deluge, a mighty 
earthquake, a fierce tempest, but it has subsided and 
there is a rainbow in the heavens. Zion is coming into 



82 



view, and we are beginning to catch glimpses of its 
innumerable company of angels. 



LECTURE SEVEN. 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 
"Thou shalt do no murder." 
We have passed the bridge; we have crossed the 
Rubicon. The mathematician's pons asinorum,^ should 
now be behind us, for we have heard the promise that 
if we reverently give heed to divine teachings we shall 
soon be out of "the wilderness and in a goodly land, 
which the Lord our God giveth us. Did these dis- 
courses permit of greater amplification, we should feel 
disposed to supplement the preceding one with thoughts 
on the Land Question. Single Tax or Land Naturali- 
zation could easily be discussed without the least de- 
parture from the text, "The land which the Lord thy 
God giveth thee," but the Cooperative Commonwealth, 
Utopia and Altruria, are all in the land toward which we 
are journeying, and we shall be fully out of the desert 
and over Jordan socially and industrially when we have 
kept all the Ten Commandments, but not earlier in our 
progressive history. , _ . 

Many interpretations of Law m the Gospels strike us 
with wonderful solemnity. The Sermon on the Mount 
is, much of it, in the Sixth Commandment. Hear the 
words of Jesus on spiritual interpretation : "I am not 
come to destroy, but to fulfill." "Ye have heard that it 
hath been said, An eye for an eye and a tooth tor a 
tooth ; but I say unto you, resist not evil ; and listen to 
John the most loving and therefore the most beloved 
of all the disciples : "Whosoever hateth his brother is a 
murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal 
life abiding in him." Oh, blustering soldiers and impa- 
tient policemen, how will ye grapple with the sin ot 
murder? Where is the gallows? Where is the electric 
chair which can put to death whoever commits murder 
in the sight of Heaven? . 

All human endeavors to blot out crime have proved 
futile The book of Esther contains no gospel unless we 
peer so far below its letter that Haman, Mordecai and 
all the Jews mentioned therein become figurative, and 
the entire story is regarded as poetry, not history. 
Elijah, who slays the prophets of Baal must cease out 
of the letter and appear only in spirit transfigured with 



83 

Jesus on the mountain, in company with Moses also 
transfigured, before we are ready to take one real step 
toward genuine civilization. 

The Sixth Commandment takes us back to Cain and 
up to heaven. Who is Cain and where is he today who 
asks "Am I my brother's keeper?" Abel's blood cries 
from the ground for vengeance, but Abel in spirit 
smiles from the celestial country and says, "Poor Cain, 
I would help you heavenward." Murder is a terrible 
thing; would that it were unmentionable, but the news- 
boys yell of it in the streets "All about the latest mur- 
der! surely that is not biblical or archaic; it is, alas' 
today s Camism. Cain and Abel are in the world at the 
present moment, and one is envious of the other 
Joseph and his brethren are here also, and the lesser 
intellects are spiteful and resentful, and they dig pits and 
seek to destroy the "Visionary" who sees more than 
they see. ^Murder springs from jealousy; and the root 
cause of jealousy is a sense of one's own inferiority, 
coupled with malicious desire to get rid of superiority m 
another instead of cultivating it in oneself. Bead 
Othello, study the disposition of Iago, and you will 
ff£°w er e long what Shakespeare meant when he said 
lniies light as air are to the jealous confirmation 
strong as proofs of holy writ." 

We need tragedy still; therefore the theatre can and 
should be the ally of the temple. Othello is weak 
because he is passionate and listens to gossip; he pays 
need to slander and allows envenomed tongues to 
prejudice him against his noble wife, the lovely Desde- 
m °, na Y T,.™ 113 - Ia S°' s consort, is a strong woman 
and she believes none of her husband's falsehoods, 
therefore, contrary to the lying slander of treacherous 
society, ^one woman does not always believe evil of 
anotner. 

The tale in Genesis of Cain and Abel is a marvelous 
looking glass a perfect mirror in which we can see our- 
selves reflected. Give what we can or what we may we 
must never be jealous of others because they have made 
costlier offerings and more acceptable ones than we 
bod is never satisfied with less than blood, for blood is 
life, and whoever sacrifices his lamb presents his all upon 
the altar. Let vulgar literalists sniff the odor of burnt 
flesh and nauseate their hearers with disgusting histories 
of heathen orgies; let them declare, to their ignorant 
minds content that the God of the Pentateuch is 
bloodthirsty and demands a bloody oblation, but we will 
preach over their heads and stand on mountain emi- 
nences while they crawl in miry swamps; for to us Zion's 



8 4 



message has been given, and blood, translated, means 
life, love, truth, a clean oblation, a living sacrifice. 

You must give your blood to your work or your 
fleshly service will always prove inadequate. Perfect 
consecration of affection, as well as of intellect, is the 
offering of Abel's lamb. Cain gives only the fruit of 
the ground, which symbolizes merely external offerings; 
fruit of the hands, service of the lips, but not the love 
of the heart. God respects heart-service, not formal 
devotion. Cain is only a ritualist; Abel is a sincere 
lover of God and gives his all, therefore his service is 
acceptable. It surely should not be difficult to trace the 
outworking of this idea in an ancient writer's mind, 
though the golden thread of spiritual meaning runs 
through the coarse vernacular of a semi-barbaric age 
even as gold is found mixed with alloy whenever pre- 
cious ore is taken out of the earth. 

Cain is a murderer because of envy; and here he 
shows to the entire world of to-day the cause of modern 
tragedies. People often think that the cause of their 
failure is someone else's success. If Abel had not 
offered a lamb, argues Cain, the Lord would have 
accepted fruits of the earth because such would have 
been the only offering presented to Him. Get rid of 
Abel and then God will have to take from you the best 
He can get from any one, and there will be no further 
grumbling in heaven. So argues the modern Cain, as 
well as his ancient prototype. It is blasphemy, but every 
murderer is a blasphemer and the sin of blasphemy is to 
hate your brother in your heart. How can we settle 
our theology so as to adjust it to all present require- 
ments? He who loves his neighbor, loves God; he who 
hates his neighbor, hates God. There are no mysteries 
in this regard except where people create them. I do 
not know whether the word god conveys or does not 
convey an intelligent idea to some one else's mind, but all 
understand the term brother. 

We can drop theology and study sociology, and per- 
chance with far greater advantage. There are many to- 
day who attribute their failures to other people's victor- 
ies, and their seeming victories, to someone else's defeat. 
Out of this false attribution grows the detestable "Every 
one for himself" and "Devil take the hindmost" doctrine. 
Selfishness is naught but perverted self-interest. It is 
therefore one of the supremest duties devolving upon 
every teacher of ethics and instructor of the young, to 
point out in an unmistakable manner the radical differ- 
ence which forever exists between righteous self-pre- 
servativeness and unrighteous selfishness. We are all 
so inter-related, so intensely inter-dependent for the 



85 

commonest necessities of existence, that it must ever 
prove the height of folly to seek to construct an abiding 
social edifice on any other than an enlightened cooper- 
ative base. Even the excellent Ruskin Colony in Ten- 
nessee has seen trouble because -of internecine strife, 
and thus one by one co-operative colonies comes to grief, 
till unsympathetic spectators turn away, more fully con- 
vinced than ever that, however beautiful cooperation 
may be in theory, it will never prove feasible in prac- 
tice. But if not, why not? High ideals and noble sen- 
timents are surely not baseless illusions which taunt 
and mock us with their beauty, while they must forever 
elude our realistic grasp. 

Ideals are our chief inspirers ; without them we could 
never mount or soar above the mediocre level of present 
attainment. But to realize an ideal outwardly will 
always continue impossible until it has first been real- 
ized inwardly. Jtjs not what we think, believe, or 
wish but how we actually feel toward each other, which 
is of supremest moment. Wisely indeed the book of 
Leviticus commands us at first not to hate our brethren 
in our hearts, and then counsels us to love them even as 
we love ourselves. (Vide Lev., xix.) 

The hideous crime of lynching has been defended 
by many perpetrators of that grossly barbaric act, 
because, say they, a warning must be given to the Negro 
race through making examples of those vile men who 
have committed unmentionable atrocities There is 
always something to be said in extenuation, though 
nothing in favor, of a violent lawless deed when a com- 
munity is aroused to what it is pleased to call righteous 
indignation against iniquity; but in calmer hours, when 
blood is cooler and the passion for revenge less evident 
the lynchers themselves are forced to admit that crimes 
are not rendered less frequent because of such barba- 
rous proceedings. Among peoples who are as yet almost 
totally void of spiritual perception, barbaric retaliation 
may appear like meting out simple justice without wait- 
ing for the slow process of law; but every student of 
psychic phenomena and all who are giving any appre 
ciable measure of attention to the silent influential work- 
ing of occult mental energies, will surely pause before 
they dare to advocate the commission of a retaliatory 
act which carries with it the dangerous spirit of 
revenge, which will surely, somewhere, find expression 
in some new act of rage or cruelty. 

The worst crimes ever committed are due to 
unbridled lusts or unsubdued passions, and no passion 
is so dangerous as that of hate, which is love inverted 
and diabohzed. As love is the creative force through- 



86 



out the universe, hate, which is love's inversion, there- 
fore its contradictory, is the arch- destroyer ; conse- 
quently to let loose the fires of hate is to impose upon 
the very community you are seeking to protect and 
benefit, an efficient cause for some terrific mental 
cyclone. The fierce cruel cry, "Remember the Maine," 
which cursed American journalism during the torrid 
summer of 1898 was, later on, so far retracted as to its 
original meaning, as to be converted into some such 
mild and gracious utterance as "Remember the heroism 
of the brave lads who suffered when the Maine 
exploded." In that change is presented a vivid exam- 
ple of how greatly ashamed thinking people soon 
become of those rash words and deeds which, in hours 
of fury, seem to frenzied intellects entirely justifiable. 

The chameleon-like policy of jingo journalists may 
fairly be looked upon as undertaken for revenue only; 
but the mass of the people is never moved by the mer- 
cenary feeling which may actuate the proprietor of a 
sensational newspaper. It is in hot blood, never in cool, 
that the people rise in fierce denunciation and cry out 
for the blood of those who have outraged them. As so 
many lovers of the Bible, and people who sincerely 
believe it to contain a divine revelation, support the 
practice of capital punishment by biblical texts, we 
respectfully request all such to weigh and ponder well 
the story of Cain and Abel which distinctly declares, 
that though Cain was an acknowledged murderer, God 
set a mark upon Cain so that no one who encountered 
him should dare to slay him. The narrative distinctly 
teaches that whoever slew Cain would take unto him- 
self a portion of the murderer's curse.. Here is a splen- 
did opportunity for all who are seeking to show the 
consistency of Holy Writ, to rise to the occasion with 
such a declaration as the following : The same God, who, 
in Genesis revealed His will concerning the treatment of 
the transgressor, gave the Decalogue from Sinai, as 
recorded in Exodus, and among its thunders shook the 
world with this detonation, "Thou shalt not kill;" and 
again the self-same God becomes incarnate in the man- 
ifested Logos and acts out His own unalterable will in 
the person of Jesus who refuses to stone the adulteress, 
tho' adultery was a capital offence according to Mosaic 
legislation, but instead of murdering her, effects her 
conversion from adultery to sanctity. 

Rev. Chas. Ames, the worthy successor of Jas. Free- 
man Clarke, at the Church of the Disciples in Boston, 
together with other good and able men in and out of 
the liberal Christian ministry, have lifted up their voices 
in no uncertain tones against the iniquity of legal mur- 



87 



der; and it is most devoutly to be hoped that the present 
century may witness, among other greatly needed 
reforms, the total abolition of capital punishment in all 
civilized sections of the earth. 

The pulpit, as a rule, does not lead the pew, in this 
respect, for it must most regretfully be admitted that a 
very large percentage of religious teachers still cling to 
the mischievous opinion that cruel retaliation will stamp 
out iniquity. What have barbaric punishments done up 
till now? Lex talionis has surely had a sufficient trial 
through all the centuries and millenniums in which peo- 
ple have boasted of its enforcement. An alleged rem- 
edy which has been persistently tried for so long a 
time and has proved entirely unsuccessful, may surely 
be discarded, without fear or regret, in favor of 
another course of action which has for one of its chief 
recommendations practical novelty coupled with sweet 
humanity. It is the lighting blow-for-blow spirit which 
is still the world's greatest curse. 

The Dreyfus case in France which, because of the 
gross injustice connected with it, cast a stigma on the 
French Republic, which will prove very hard for the 
French Nation to completely obliterate, owed its entire 
animus to an insane idolatry of the Armv. Just as 
king-worshippers in days of old took for their motto 
"The King can do no wrong!" so modern idolators of 
everything military, have acted as though their watch- 
word must ever be "Our Army can do no wrong." 
Protect the Army at all hazards was the sentiment of 
the Anti-Dreyfusards throughout the trial of an inno- 
cent Jewish Captain, who would never have been con- 
victed of any offense against his country had it not been 
for the resolution on the part of the idolized Army and 
its sycophantic worshippers, to shield the guilty by con- 
demning the innocent rather than let it be known that 
the popular idol was corrupted at its core. It is a note- 
worthy instance in modern history, that "Down with the 
Jews," and "Long live the Army," have been contem- 
porary clamors. 

Jews are often soldiers and the history of the people 
of Israel proves them to be by no means averse to mil- 
itary tactics; but the undisputed history of the Jews 
abundantly proves that they have made grievous mis- 
takes whenever they have sought to gain or even retain 
supremacy at the point of the sword. If Israel is God's 
especial champion, if the Jewish people must prove 
themselves chosen and distinguished above all other 
peoples upon earth, then must Israel learn that only as 
Prince of Peace can Messiah come to Zion. It mat- 
ters not whether one's sympathies are chiefly with or- 



88 



thodox Zionists, who look forward to a literal rebuild- 
ing of the city of Jerusalem and a recolonization by 
Jews of Palestine in the very near future, or with those 
other Jews who do not favor, geographically, Zionistic 
propensities, but interpret all Messianic prophecies in 
an extra-local manner ; the fact remains that if the Jews 
have yet a mission to fulfill on earth that mission is one 
of peace, not warfare. 

The typical Jew is naturally pacific; to him education 
is of the utmost importance, and engagement in peace- 
ful industries, both commercial and agricultural, is con- 
genial. If the lesson of the Dreyfus case is now ade- 
quately heeded, the kindred hootings of a savage mob, 
"A bas les Jnifs," and "Vive Varmee," will not have been 
without profound and profitable significance. 

Judaism, as the mother of universal peace, may yet 
be crowned by all the nations; and if such proud des- 
tiny yet awaits the ' scattered sons and daughters of 
reviled but never conquered Israel, new and glorious 
light will have been found to shine upon those glowing 
prophecies of Israel's coming victories which have 
cheered the hearts and kept alive the courage of mil- 
lions of persecuted exiles through all the weary ages 
of dispersion and affliction. Jews have sinned in com- 
mon with Gentiles, and though Jew-baiters and Jew- 
haters are entirely without excuse, those who are loyal 
to the cause of Israel are not doing wisely if they re- 
sort to silly flattery of the Jew on every possible occa- 
sion. 

To acknowledge the ideals of a people ^ and to pay 
tribute also to that people's glorious achievements in 
the face of almost insuperable difficulties, is only right 
and honest; but in the great cosmopolitan state of the 
age to come, neither Jew nor Gentile ean reign alone, 
for none will be subservient where all must be co-opera- 
tive. 

It ever remains for spiritual, in contra-distinction 
from material, scientists, to unfold the hidden treasures 
of the Law and to dilate especially upon the inward 
aspects of all important truth. "Lay down your arms," 
say advocates of arbitration in place of warfare, and so 
say we from our avowedly and distinctively metaphysi- 
cal platform, but it is all in vain that we ask the nations 
to disarm until we ourselves have practiced private indi- 
vidual and family disarmament. The Conference at 
the Hague in Holland, which has already borne good 
fruit in many noticeable ways, cannot accomplish by 
means of its deliberations anything like so much as its 
most enthusiastic promoters and admirers hope it may 
accomplish, because the roots of warfare lie deep 



89 

within our individual hearts, and we do not as a rule 
seek to eradicate them.. There is always something 
attractive and impressive in a brilliant assemblage of 
dignitaries from various parts of the world 
gathered to consider ways and means for 
the general m betterment of human conditions; 
but there is also much of picturesqueness in 
military tournaments, and nothing can appear better 
dressed on the occasion of a patriotic celebration than 
a good-sized cannon. We must beware lest we permit 
ourselves to be over-charmed with glittering externals 
and while paying homage to those, forget the weightier 
matters of the Law. Men fight duels over trifles ; nations 
go to war like peevish children to resent trivial insults 
and petty aggressions. The war spirit is after all the 
puerile spirit; the peace spirit is a matured spirit. 

Children are fascinated with uniforms, so are all 
shallow adults. No games are more popular than those 
played with toy soldiers. Sham fights in which real 
soldiers amuse the multitude on public occasions are 
among the most popular diversions in various parts of 
England, and though no harm is done to any one for 
the entire celebration passes off peacefully, no psychol- 
ogist can fail to see that even such spectacles create in 
the minds of thousands of susceptible young people an 
admiration for warfare, which is probably also entailed 
upon a succeeding generation. One of the greatest diffi- 
culties m the way of abolishing or even reducing the 
great standing armies of Europe is the intense admira- 
tion for military display exhibited by the rank and file 
of taxpayers, upon whose usually slender resources a 
very heavy dram is constantly being made to support 
impressive military pageants. We all know the parrot 
Expansionists" and "Imperialists," that Divine 
Will ordains that the Caucasian race should completely 
dominate all inferior races; but even though this sur- 
mise be true, the greater a people and the wiser, the 
more pacific should be its course of action Neither the 
British Empire nor the United States of America can 
stand free of blame in the light of the Sixth Command- 
ment. It is utterly useless to sing constantly in church 
as a response to each commandment, "Incline our hearts 
to keep this law," if we do not desire our hearts to be 
so inclined, or if we do not voluntarily co-operate with 
divine goodness in so inclining them. 
§ The Sixth Commandment has always been very 
imperfectly observed, and were it carried out in any- 
thing like its obvious fullness, it would be the rallying 
cry of all civilized peoples united to abolish war. Dr 
Lyman Abbott, and other able preachers of the advanced 



go 



school in American Congregationalism, move very cau- 
tiously along the road which leads to eventual declara- 
tion of universal peace; but there are some intrepid 
souls who are even now ready to declare that the hour 
has already struck for firing the last cannon or partici- 
pating in the last military show. Our good friends, the 
Vegetarians, are very apt to extend the meaning of the 
command, "Thou shalt not kill" until it has embraced 
more than the human world, and though there are 
decided extremists among them, who are at present 
open to the charge of impracticability, there can be no 
doubt in the minds of enlightened evolutionists as to the 
final solution of the diet problem. Though it is not 
safe to say that we should all grow spiritual and humane 
at once did we desist from eating meat, it is a psycho- 
physiological fact that flesh-eating does tend in the direc- 
tion of warlikeness. As we become increasingly peace- 
ful in our desires and thoughts we shall advance grad- 
ually but surely to a far more beautiful and a much 
healthier mode of eating than generally prevails at 
present. 

Slaughter houses are not true adjuncts of civilization, 
and if it be discovered and demonstrated that we can 
all live better without animal food than with it, we may 
joyfully hail the day when the Sixth Commandment 
will be observed in all its fullness ; and men and animals 
shall share the planet together as friends and comrades 
even .as Isaiah and other great Prophets have foretold. 
First and last, however, is it the paramount duty of the 
teacher of ethics to put this whole vast subject on a 
solid metaphysical foundation. 

Let us emphasize continually in homes, schools, and 
business houses the great need of feeling kindly one 
toward the other; then, as surely as the law of cause 
and effect works undeviatingly, out of our good inter- 
iors will spontaneously proceed kindly words and 
actions, and society will be fully regenerated bv the lov- 
ing practice of all that is inculcated in the Golden Rule. 
"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
even so to them." 



91 

LECTURE EIGHT. 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 
"Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery." 

Though a single word only is used in the literal text 
of the Seventh Commandment, it is almost universally 
admitted that far more than the obvious meaning of this 
one word is implied in the comprehensive spirit of the 
Decalogue. The purity of the marriage relation and 
strict conformity to the monogamic rule has ever been 
one of the leading glories of the House of Israel. 

Polygamy and polyandry, as well as slavery, were in 
the world, even as human sacrifice was in the world 
when the bright light of dawning Judaism awakened 
the consciences of multitudes eventually,— though only 
of a few at first,— to discern the breaking of a new and 
glorious day of human liberty and purity. Chastity and 
freedom are inseparably connected, for there is no slav- 
ery so gross, no chain so binding, as that of ungov- 
erned sensual appetite. 

Human beings are called upon by the trumpet voice 
from Sinai to rise to heights of moral grandeur, 
unknown to them before, and as they rise they become 
increasingly a sacred and peculiar people, unlike those 
around them, because of practical superiority in thought, 
word, and conduct. 

The Sermon on the Mount takes the Seventh Com- 
mandment in hand, just as it takes all the others, and 
transfers our thought from the outward letter to the 
animating spirit. 

Such a saying as "Whosoever has desired to commit 
adultery has already committed the offense in his heart," 
may be a hard doctrine in many ears, but all metaphy- 
sical reasoning must fall instantly to the ground if such 
a saying he rejected. Times without number the world's 
greatest prophets have called upon the people to prac- 
tice inward cleanliness; purity of heart, virginity of 
desire, freedom from the will to act impurely, these have 
been the hidden virtues which seers (who look below all 
surfaces) have unanimously counseled and extolled. 

Of what avail is hypocrisy? How can the fountains 
of life (will and thought) be polluted and the externals 
oi speech and action be made pure? Only as the interior 
of the "cup and platter" are cleansed and kept whole- 
some can we reasonably hope for purity in outward life. 

It is now being very generally conceded by all deep 
thinkers, that the psychic influence exerted by and 



92 



through the mother upon the unborn child has most of 
all to do with shaping the interior mold into which the 
living entity is cast prior to the completion of gestative 
processes. Though all souls are alike in primal essence, - 
and every human being is divine at core, we have to 
confront the exteriors of existence both psychically and ' 
physically at every turn while journeying through the 
world, and as the Ten Commandments are surely given 
as a rule for human practice, and all are directly con- 
cerned with our mutual duties and obligations here and 
now, we are specially interested in tracing^ out their 
immediate relations to those vital metaphysical teach- 
ings, which an ever increasing multitude regard as the 
only certain light which points a way through the pres- 
ent wilderness, out of sensuous "Egypt" into spiritual 
"Canaan." 

We are all working our continuous Exodus out of the 
state where we have long been living upon the contents 
of Egyptian flesh pots, to where we shall happily and 
healthily subsist upon the delicious and luscious fruits 
of that Land of Promise, which is still the ideal unat- 
tained, though an ideal attainable. As we press toward 
our goal, which means for us nothing less than complete 
subjection of flesh to spirit, we hear the Command- 
ments within ourselves ringing out one by one with ever 
increasing distinctness, because as we evolve spiritually 
the voice of God in our ears grows ever louder and 
clearer. 

At first there is no higher or deeper meaning attach- 
able by us to the Seventh Commandment than an earnest 
counsel to live decently and respectably in the family 
relation, to observe a code of honor and obey the Golden 
Rule as far as we understand its import in all marital 
or conjugal relations. But as we grow more illumined, 
we begin to see the futility, almost the impossibility, of 
faithfully observing an outward law if our thoughts 
and affections are permitted to disobey it. Nine-tenths 
of the degrading sensuality actually existent in the world 
today is an almost inevitable outcome of the mere exter- 
nalism in religion and morals which has satisfied itself 
with the semblance of outer conformity to a divine pre- 
cept, the interior sense or meaning of which has 
remained entirely unexplored. 

All spiritual education aims upward; all true educa- 
tors place the highest possible standards as ideals before 
their disciples. Through constant meditation^ or con- 
centration of thought upon these sublime spiritual pic- 
tures, the lower desires which are common to the ani- 
mal plane of human consciousness are overcome 



93 



because they are transcended, and by this means a phy- 
siological as well as*a psychological transformation is 
effected within the individual. All questions pertaining 
to generation are carefully veiled and surrounded with 
an atmosphere of speechless mystery in what is termed 
"polite society," and it is well that this should be so until 
the sacred question of reproduction can be dealt with 
in a far loftier and sublimer way than is customary 
among those who either appeal to lasciviousness or else 
take an altogether too austere and often terrifying view 
of a question which only needs delicate, luminous, scien- 
tific handling to render it acceptable to all earnest phil- 
anthropists, who, if they think at all, must agree, that 
what most nearly concerns the perpetuation of the 
human family ought to be dealt with wisely and cour- 
ageously. 

The Jews as a people have enjoyed for many centu- 
ries a well-earned reputation for unusual fidelity in the 
marriage relation, and wherever strict Judaism prevails, 
one is pretty sure of finding a far greater than average 
degree of domestic peace and happiness. The usual 
orthodox or conservative Jew is a man who attends 
strictly to business jn business hours, but who always 
finds time for the enjoyment of family life when he has 
left his shop or office. In London and other large cities 
where Judaism has its strongholds, the inner life of 
Jewish households compares more than favorably with 
the domestic peace of non-Jewish families. 

We hear much today concerning "The new woman," 
both pro and con, but in all her beautiful and desirable 
aspects, we find her fully described in the thirty-first 
chapter of Proverbs. ♦ The charming composite picture 
of ideal womanhood drawn according to tradition by 
Solomon's son Lemuel who seeks for his son a proverb- 
ially and exceptionally excellent wife, may be fairly 
regarded as a typical Jewess of the fairest and noblest 
type, alike ancient and contemporary. 

Success vs. failure in marriage must be the 
outcome of mutual appreciation and mutual 
understanding. Much that commonly passes for 
love is no true affection, but simply pas- 
sional impulse, unenlightened by reason. Co-ed- 
ucation, which places boys and girls on a proper 
equal level, has much to do with educating the average 
youth and maiden above that foolish and dangerous 
prudery which, though masquerading as the grace of 
modesty, is often nothing but an artful cover for the 
most shameless views of sex relationship entertained in 
secret. . 



94 



The intelligent teacher and practitioner of spiritual 
science studiously avoids all suggestions which even 
remotely border on pruriency, and though every intelli- 
gent person knows that there are certain natural dis- 
tinctions between men and women adapting each and all 
to varied works of usefulness in the economy of univer- 
sal order, all such vulgarity as discourses on "sex-mag- 
netism" or the alleged desirability of healer and patient 
being always of opposite sex is rigorously excluded from 
all genuine metaphysical curricula. 

The New Testament teaches that "in Christ" there is 
a new creation. The old order is surpassed, and a new 
regenerate order takes its place. As we arejione of us 
fully regenerated, though we may be all in^pfocess of 
regeneration, it behooves us to move intelligently in our 
instructions, along a road which surely, though it may 
be but gradually, leads from the old to the new in 
human perception, and thence into corresponding prac- 
tice. For the great majority of men and women a celi- 
bate life may not be commendable, though individual 
celibates may be very noble. 

There is a right and proper regard for the sacred 
offices of paternity and maternity in the hearts and minds 
of a very large percentage of approximately normal 
human beings, and were it not for false standards and 
corrupt social usages sanctioned by "Mrs. Grundy," there 
would be far more happy marriages and far healthier 
children than abound at present. 

Far too much stress is usually laid upon the fact of 
sex difference, but this is happily being rapidly overcome 
by the certain adjustment of the relations of men and 
women through the spread of a wiser education than 
formerly prevailed. A double standard of morality is 
fast falling into disrepute; and, while woman cannot 
permit herself to indulge in that degrading license which 
man has too long considered legitimate for his own sex, 
though unlawful for the other, it is possible to so rear 
boys and girls together that a common goal of untar- 
nished purity shall be the ideal of all. 

If we wish to truly raise the standard of morals, we 
must not accentuate sex differences as they have been 
accentuated in days gone by. Men and women must 
enjoy good comradeship, and go about together on equal 
instead of unequal terms. In the interests of morality we 
must certainly put in a plea for the total discontinuance 
of all those practices which make young women degrad- 
ingly dependent for amusements and suppers on young 
men. Two young people can go to a lecture, 
concert, opera, or any respectable entertain- 



95 



ment together without a chaperon, even though 
one is a youth and the other a maiden, but they 
should go as equals, financially as well as otherwise. 
Two young men or two young women can go about 
together on equal terms of share-and-share-alike, the 
result being that mutual esteem and abiding friendship 
is fostered; but wherever one is financially dependent on 
the other, the one who pays the bills becomes "bossy," 
while the "one who is always "treated" becomes servile. ' 
^ Marriage is properly a copartnership of equals, and 
unless both feel this there will always be the assumed 
headship of one and slavishness of the other. The best 
thinkers of today are not in favor either of a patriarch- 
ate or a matriarchate, but as Felix Adler and other bril- 
liant speakers on Ethical Culture platforms have 
declared, man and woman are co-efficients; the head of 
the ideal House is dual, not single. 

Man and woman will naturally assume right mutual 
relations when false beliefs are conquered and true 
ideals _ upheld. Not only is it necessary to insist upon 
financial equality and other commercial as well as edu- 
cational aspects of the sex question, it is still more 
momentous a theme when we come to suggest the anti- 
dote to all prevailing false feeling concerning virtue and 
its propagation; this needs vigorous as well as careful 
handling. 

Gertrude Campbell, the author of a beautiful poem, 
"Non-resistance," quotes as a heading for her verses,' 
"Resist not evil," and "He who wars with sin leaves 
nothing lovely in his earthly tracks." With the first 
text we are all so familiar that it falls unchallenged on 
many ears ; it is accepted as a trite saying to be tacitly 
endorsed because of its alleged divine origin, though to 
put it into actual practice, is very far removed from the 
intention of a majority of "pious Christians" who seem 
to consider this counsel an impracticable portion of 
divine revelation. Strange inconsistency to profess to 
know better than the Omniscient! The second motto 
will certainly be severely contested wherever quoted, 
because it is not supposed to be fortified with any spe- 
cially divine sanction. Let us consider it in relation to 
the Social Purity Question one in which we ought to 
be all deeply interested. It has been wisely said that 
when vice is first beheld it appears hideous and repels 
us by its ugliness, but when we have gazed upon it a 
number of times we are apt to grow so accustomed to its 
distorted lineaments, that we fail to feel any longer our 
original repugnance for its deformity. 



96 



Blind leaders of the blind, well-intentioned though 
they often are, instead of explaining the path of virtue 
and making that path attractive, fall into the baleful 
error of describing vice in all its details on the specious 
plea that familiarity with vice is security against its 
snares. 

Temperance workers are, many of them, beginning to 
get their eyes open to the fact that boys have learned to 
run a distillery, and have often been known to manufac- 
ture whiskey through following directions received from 
a temperance lecturer in a church, who was warning his 
hearers against the sin of drunkenness. Many a "con- 
verted crook" has led young people who have attended 
"revival meetings," into all the secrets of crookery by 
telling the public all about his own career while yet an 
unconverted man. 

We want no lectures on vice to young or old of either 
sex, but the world can always be benefited by disserta- 
tions on the path of virtue. The Brahmins, at all events 
those among them who steadfastly adhere to the beau- 
tiful spirituality which is the essence of original Brah- 
minism, teach that if we would attain to the Nirvanic 
state of rest and bliss united we must contemplate only 
the Divine, and so concentrate our mental gaze upon the 
pure ineffable, that we shall be weaned away from all 
the allurements of those lower planes which, according to. 
Occultism, are always ready to capture those who med- 
itate upon them. Swedenborg's entire system of philos- 
ophy trends in the direction of "turning to the Lord," 
and thus "overcoming the hells." All who know Swe- 
denborg well enough to have read his much-contro- 
verted treatise on "Celestial Love and Its Chaste 
Delights, also Adulterous Love and itsrSinful Pleasures/' 
though they may not think the whole of that volume 
desirable for children's reading, cannot fail to see how 
a great philosopher, grappling with actual conditions 
prevailing in Europe in the middle of the Eighteenth 
Century, clearly pointed out the distinction between 
lesser and greater evils, and clearly taught something 
resembling the famous saying, "Of two evils always 
choose the lesser," though he aims from first to last to fix 
the reader's thoughts and affections upon the sublimest 
ideal of celestial conjugal relationship. 

True marriage has been in high degree practically 
illustrated by England's hallowed Queen Victoria, who, 
after the passing to unseen realms of Prince Albert in 
i860, lived so far above the thought of a possible second 
marriage that she went extremely far in manifesting 
disapprobation of what Church and State alike sane- 



97 



tion — the remarriage of widowers and widows. There 
are many subjects which do not readily lend themselves 
to elaborate verbal analysis, and this is surely one of 
them. No one can read the Pentateuch and then the 
Gospel without clearly tracing the Sinaitic tone in the 
first, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and the Zionis- 
tic voice in the second, "In the resurrection (or regener- 
ation) they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but 
are as the angels." But how are the angels? many will 
inquire. We must become angelic ourselves before we 
can fully answer that question; but Jesus evidently 
alluded to the well known Kabalistic view of angels 
when he replied to the Saducean lawyers who ques- 
tioned him as to whose wife in the spiritual state a 
woman would be who on earth had lived with seven 
lawful husbands, for six times had she become a widow. 
The only counsel which will surely stand the test of all 
experience is that which urges perfect fidelity in thought, 
word and deed to the highest standard of virtue already 
perceived. 

"Man grows as higher grow his aims," is a good 
motto; and if for the word aims we substitute ideals, 
we shall meet the uttermost requirements of transcen- 
dental philosophy.. 

If we question Emerson, he will tell us in his won- 
derfully sublime essay, "The Oversoul," that the way to 
triumph over all lower propensities, is for the as-yet- 
imperfect human intellect to adore its own essential 
and potential perfectness. "I, the imperfect, adore my 
own perfect," is an unsurpassed saying, for it has in it 
the richest cream of all the grandest philosophies extant. 

Now let us consider the richest and most assuring 
tone in the seventh Word from Sinai which we will read 
thus : Thou, Oh spiritual Israelite ("he is a Jew who is 
one inwardly") shalt appear in the eyes of all men as 
unusually pure, for though thou travelest and sojourn- 
est among adulterers, thou shalt not commit adultery 
thyself ; and thou shalt learn how to extirpate adultery 
among those who yet commit it. This is thy mission, 
for this thou art called to be a peculiar people, Oh 
Israel ! 

As we grow to be sinless in any respect, we can re- 
form those whom the special sin we have conquered 
has engulfed. "Let him that is without sin cast the first 
stone." The immaculate Christ alone can cast it, and in 
his hand it is a truth presented in love. Magdalene dies 
to sin and is awakened to righteousness because Jesus 
has stoned to death her frailty, and awakened within 



98 



her a loving, quenchless determination to be hencefor- 
ward pure and strong. 

Zion again is found within Sinai, and though the let- 
ter would kill, the spirit points the road to life immor- 
tal. 



LECTURE NINE. 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 
"Thou Shalt Not Steal." 

Among the numberless Shakespearian quotations with 
which modern writers continually enrich their essays, 
none is more popular and none more thought-provoking 
than the following magnificent lines from "Hamlet." 
"This above all, to thine own self be true ; 

And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou can'st not then be false to any man." 

The same author has also familiarized us with the 
grand heroic sentiment for honor, expressed in the 
equally well remembered words, "He who steals my 
purse steals trash." It is not altogether complimentary 
to present-day civilization, or to contemporaneous stand- 
ards of morality, to cull too freely from the pages of 
dramas written more than three hundred years ago, if 
we are keen at contrasting the glorious contempt for 
mere external wealth contained in many of them with 
the slavish idolatry of gold now, alas ! so terribly con- 
spicuous. But though a first glance may serve to set us 
to thinking soberly and perhaps gloomily upon the 
degeneracy of this present age, we soon begin to con- 
sider wisely that the high standard of nobility set by 
the greatest seers and poets of the time of Queen Eliz- 
abeth, were far more truly ideal conceptions of pro- 
phetic geniuses than samples of prevailing practice 
and opinion. We may with certainty decide that there 
have been, as there still are, great souls who shine like 
beacons in the midst of surrounding moral darkness like 
stars on a winter night, but never does history inform 
us that the great mass of slowly evolving humanity has 
risen to a height where the sublime ideals of the proph- 
ets and sages have been actually embodied in the com- 
mon lives of the multitude. 

We shall never take in the true meaning and mes- 
sage of the Decalogue unless we remember that the Ten 
Commandments were given from a mountain summit, 



99 

a spiritual - eminence far above the ordinary table-land on 
which the great percentage of "respectable" people are 
living even to-day. We have not grown up to the Deca- 
logue, but we are steadily growing toward it An 
immense gulf yet yawns between the supreme altitude of 
the Zion-height to which the Sinaitic moral code is ever 
pointing us, and "conventional morality" as taught and 
practiced today. 

Tradition says that thirty-four hundred vears have 
elapsed since the days of the historic Moses," and mod- 
ern critics of the book of Exodus inform us that all the 
ten Commandments are much older than the date usu- 
ally assigned for the Sinaitic revelation, for though they 
may have been put together into a solid body of pre- 
cepts at that time, they can be found scattered here and 
there m ante-Jewish literature, just as all Christian 
maxims which are formulated into a solid body of teach- 
ing in the Sermon on the Mount, can be found scattered 
treely through the Jewish literature from which much of 
the New Testament doctrine was confessedly compiled 
It is quite as useless for a devout Jew to insist upon the 
exclusively Jewish origin of the Decalogue as it is for a 
pious. Christian to claim originality for all the sublimest 
ethical inculcations to be found in the gospel narratives. 

Truth does not depend on any age or place. Ail great 
teachers have declared truth to be divine, immortal, 
universally accessible, and therefore in no sense private 
property or a proprietary article. There may be such a 
practice as filching or plagiarizing when it comes to 
reproducing sentence by sentence, the words of a prede- 
cessor or a contemporary in exact literary form, but 
ideas, like principles, are universal.. No one can claim to 
have actually originated any truthful utterance; the 
author of Ecclesiastes may have been well within the 
line of reason when he wrote, "There is nothing new 
(absolutely) under the sun." The gross valuation placed 
upon money, as such, is responsible for perhaps ninety 
per cent, of the stealing which abounds today without 
any such cause as lack of material necessities to exten- 
uate it. 

We may well agree with those philanthropists who 
excuse theft where a poor woman steals bread to save 
her children, more than herself, from positive starva- 
tion, but there is no excuse for those robberies and defal- 
cations, of which we so frequentlyy read, where persons 
who have stolen on a large scale have long received 
ample wages to supply them with the comforts as well 
as necessaries and decencies of existence. It is ever the 



UfC. 



100 



province of the genuine psychologist (and every 
teacher should be well versed in the fundamentals of 
practical psychology) to point a needed moral by getting 
behind effects to causes, thereby discovering a radical 
and thoroughly effective remedy for the disease of dis- 
honesty, and every other moral ailment which 
afflicts society. With the constant advance of polite ter- 
minology we are growing further and further away 
from the strong old custom of calling a spade simply a 
spade, therefore we" like the fine technical terms "klepto- 
mania" and "kleptomaniac" much better than the old- 
fashioned thief and theft. There is a bright and also a 
dark side to the employment of these Greek euphemisms. 
The bright side consists in the growing tendency among 
criminologists, penologists, jurists and all who are called 
upon to deal with crime directly, to abandon harsh views 
and practices in favor of milder doctrines and gentler 
usages. The dark side is the tendency to excuse crim- 
inality on the score of constitutional incapacity for vir- 
tue, a tendency which weakens moral fibre and counter- 
acts the good effects which might reasonably be 
expected to follow upon a kinder mode of dealing with 
offenders than has been hitherto thought practicable. 
^ Dishonesty is clearly an affliction of the will, a con- 
comitant of perverted desire on its subjective side, while 
on its objective side it is merely the inevitable fruitage of 
illicit ambitions. It is not credible that so long_as^mere 
external wealth is idolized, and the leading question 
everywhere asked concerns what a man has rather than 
what he is, young men and women with no very strong 
moral principle will miss an opportunity of thievishly 
appropriating to themselves whatever they can lay hands 
upon which, in their belief, will raise them in the esti- 
mation of members of that society in "which they most 
desire to move. Moral principle is certainly not being 
sufficiently evolved in the churches and religious schools 
which fashion patronizes. No one has yet written a 
reply to Edward Bellamy's two magnificent novels, 
"Looking Backward" and "Equality," wherein he dis- 
tinctly proves that the chief motive for dishonesty could 
not exist in such a social state as he has depicted with a 
master hand in both those marvelous romances. The 
unanswerable argument against valuing people because 
of what they have, instead of on account of what they 
are, is based upon the undeniable fact that stolen money 
has just as great a purchasing power in every mart of 
trade as money obtained by honest industry. Aristocrats, 
who cling to their ancient motto, noblesse oblige, may yet 



101 

have a part to play in social elevation; but plutocrats 
who can lay no other claim to distinction than the pos- 
session of so many million dollars or pounds sterling, 
can only offer a ludicrous spectacle in the eyes of all 
merit-respecting persons. 

We are no champions of poverty, though we do not 
overlook the intelligible theological distinction between 
voluntary poverty and involuntary destitution. "Sell 
all thou hast (or as Marie Corelli translated it in 'The 
Sorrows of Satan/ sell half thou hast) and give to the 
poor," can easily be made to signify that we should 
overcome poverty in others as a result of our own opu- 
lence without doing the slightest violence to the spirit 
of the text. But reason clearly proves that there can be no 
giving or distributing where there is nothing to bestow, 
and common honor insists that no one can have a right 
to give away other people's property. 

A recommendation to honesty is a counsel to indus- 
try, for idleness and destitution must ever go hand in 
hand and destitution will surely lead to theft or suicide. 
Nature provides superabundantly for the maintenance 
ot a very much larger population than this planet is now 
called upon to support. Eighty million is now regarded 
as a fair estimate of the population of the United 
States of America, and a very small population it is, 
considering the immense territory included in the 
national area. It has been computed that ten times and 
even more than twelve times the present population 
need not result in over-crowding, but extremely good 
management would have to prevail in order to com- 
fortably sustain so great a multitude. 

Fear of want leads to dishonesty, no matter on what 
plane the fear or the want may be expressed. Poor starv- 
ing creatures who pilfer in order barely to exist are at 
the foot of a long ladder, whose bottom rungs only 
appear disreputable. A Tittle further up the same stair- 
way we encounter the timid truckling millions who 
dare not avow their honest faith religiously, politically, 
or any other way because their "bread and butter" is at 
stake. A little higher than the vulgar average, we find 
on the same ladder, preachers, college professors and a 
whole host of literary and artistic people who dare not 
say their honest say, because salary, promotion or some 
other material claim is so far fettering their spirits that 
they are practically living a lie, and they know it; 
indeed, they frequently admit it. On the same ladder, 
also, are all who cheat tailors, dressmakers, milliners, 
upholsterers, caterers, and tradespeople of all descrip- 



102 



tions more or less extensively, because they must keep 
up style and live fashionably, though it takes downright 
cruel dishonesty to keep up such deceitful appearances^ 
The church as an institution, regardless of denomina- 
tion, could do an immense amount of good if it would 
only publicly and unitedly veto the senseless and 
immoral love of display which turns today's alleged 
sanctuaries into something little better than "dens of 
robbers." The New Testament deals mercilessly with 
hypocrites, and even makes hypocrisy a worse offense 
than any other iniquity. 

Hypocrisy is the basest and most nearly incorrigible 
form of dishonesty, because it "steals the livery of 
heaven to serve the devil in." Silk dresses and frizzed 
hair are of no avail in education or religion, but m too 
many a Sunday School those children who wear velvet 
coats, lace collars, and other fripperies of stupid fash- 
ion, are looked up to by teachers as well as classmates 
while honest moderation in attire is met with a sneer of 
contempt aimed at something ignorantly styled poverty. 
A great many mistakes have been made by avowed met- 
aphysicians during the past twenty years, in their 
endeavors to conquer poverty, and we are very happy to 
find that many extreme Mental Scientists are now walk- 
ing along a truly moral track by counseling all their 
readers and students to set to work Jo, build up their 
characters, to evolve their true individuality before 
seeking to draw to themselves external things to which 
they may not yet be fairly entitled. Instead of seeking 
to get something from without, we must first seen, to 
evolve or develop some force from within, which, when 
sufficiently aroused and liberated, will assuredly con- 
stitute us magnets to draw to ourselves all necessary and 
even beautiful externals. "Seek ye first the kingdom of 
heaven and its righteousness, and all these (external) 
things will be added unto you," is a truly scientific coun- 
sel because no sooner do we actually become great 
within ourselves than we begin to attract external cor- 
respondences agreeing with our interior state, it is 
clearly dishonest to expect something for nothing; the 
very desire to accrete to ourselves what we have not 
earned is a demoralizing mental enterprise. 

Dishonesty can never be confined to mere taking ot 
money, trinkets, or aught else that may be classed as 
portable belongings. Every wish to subsist on what 
Henry George has called "unearned increment is thor- 
oughly dishonest, and those who avail themselves of 
every possible opportunity to get something for nothing, 



103 



—even though that something be instruction or mental 
treatment,— are sinning grievously against their own 
moral, mental, physical, and circumstantial develop- 
ment. It may not sound highly ethical to quote the 
trite proverb, "Honesty is the best policy," but it is 
sound at the core, for though a truly honest individual 
is not actuated by sordid motives of worldly policy, it is 
perfectly fair to tell the truth concerning all roads to 
success, adapting our teachings to the present planes of 
comprehension manifested by those to whom we seek to 
convey instruction. Though we abhor a grasping greedy 
policy, and can conceive of little that is much more 
despicable than taking all advantage possible of a, 
neighbor's dire necessity, there are two more points from 
which the vast question of honesty must be regarded. 
Every one condemns usury, and because Shylock is rep- 
resented as a usurer in The Merchant of Venice, very 
little sympathy usualy goes out to this, by no means 
truly typical, Jew of the European Ghetto. 

Shakespeare ended that particular play very unsatis- 
factorily, if he wrote it for the purpose of teaching a 
great moral lesson, which we are inclined to doubt after 
witnessing such supremely moral tragedies as Macbeth, 
Othello, and Hamlet. If, however, the playwright's 
intention was to hold the mirror faithfully up to Euro- 
pean manners and customs in his day, he certainly pro- 
duced a masterpiece intensely valuable to this day as 
a historic picture of how the average Christian felt and 
acted to the Jew before the advent of what we may 
truly call a new and higher humanitarian sentiment. 
Ostensible religion does not always counsel honesty; on 
the contrary it is often pleaded as an excuse for the 
commission of the grossest injustices. We do not blame 
religion as it is blamed by some, for we are not gullible 
enough to believe that any higher motive than sordid 
self-interest leads to Anti-Semitism. The conviction of 
an innocent man, like Captain Alfred Dreyfus, to five 
years' solitary confinement on Devil's Island (well 
named) and a host of other infernal acts of shameless 
turpitude, — all of which can be glossed over by sleek 
hypocrites if they can only make their dupes believe that 
in persecuting unoffending Jews they are protecting the 
church of Christ, are examples of undisguised immo- 
rality masquerading as religious impulse. What an 
utterly corrupt institution — corrupt as the French army 
has been — a church would be if it really needed such 
detestable dishonor and such pestilent mendacity to save 
it from inevitable downfall. 



104 

To steal man's honor is always worse than to filch his 
worldly possessions. Such was the teaching of the 
incomparable Bard of Avon, more than three centuries 
ago; but how many people really act as though they 
believed this to-day? Slander, malicious gossip, and 
every form of evil-speaking is freely indulged by cant- 
ing church-members and non-church members alike, who 
would not hesitate to fully endorse the letter of the old 
rhyme, 

"To steal a pin it is a sin.. 
Much more to steal a larger thing." 

Seeing, then, that "he who filches my good name" is 
supposed to commit no sin at all, a good name instead of 
being, as the author of Proverbs considered it, of more 
value than the finest gold and the most precious gems, 
is regarded as of less importance than a common hair- 
pin or some other paltry utensil, the market _ value of 
which is entirely insignificant. Though it is indeed 
vulgar, ill-mannered and to an extent immoral, to take 
even the smallest' article of another's property, venial 
indeed in the sight of Heaven must be the offense of 
taking a few coppers out of a money box, when 
weighed in God's balances with the dastardly offense of 
robbing a fellow-being of honest reputation.. People who 
take notice of anonymous letters and believe their con- 
tents to others' detriment, and all who give ear to slan- 
derous reports of their neighbors — miserable slavish 
worshippers of the false God, "they say"— are guilty of 
sin against the Eighth Commandment, and if they pre- 
sume to call themselves admirers of Shakespeare, some 
day he or another sincere moralist may rise up in ter- 
rible judgment to testify against them. - 

Jesus never turned men out of the temple precincts 
because they bought and sold within the sacred enclo- 
sure, but solely on account of their dishonest traffic, else 
how' could the words apply, "Ye have made it a den. of 
thieves." Many and blind and ingenious have been the 
attempted explanations of that heroic scene in the life 
of the great Master which immediately preceded the 
closing tragedy of his earthly ministry. Dr. Franz 
Hartmann in his "Jehoshua, the prophet of Nazareth," 
has! so utterly misconstrued the scene as to greatly impair 
his authority as a judicious critic, for he has gone so far 
as to say that Jesus lost His temper, and with loss of 
temper lost His previous magical power, which loss culr 
minated in his ignominious crucifixion. Far otherwise 
do wise commentators interpret the thrilling narrative. 
One young man unarmed, therefore seemingly defense- 



105 

less, enters into the midst of a gang of hypocritical, dis- 
honest traders, and by force of spiritual authority alone 
ejects them from the desecrated place. Why do they 
allow themselves to be expelled when they are many and 
He is only one? Why do they not snatch the knotted 
cord out of His impetuous hand and force Him out, while 
they remain in undisturbed occupancy? The sole answer 
which can be reasonably given to this most pertinent 
enquiry is the all convincing and ever present one, that 
physical strength or numbers can never prove a match 
for indomitable spiritual energy. 

The successors or lineal descendants of those perfid- 
ious money-changers are to be met with at the present 
day anywhere and everywhere among Jews and Chris- 
tians equally. If the scene is laid in ancient times, when 
every devout Jew was called upon to visit the literal 
Jerusalem three times a year, to offer sacrifices at Pass- 
over, Pentecost and Tabernacles, animals and' birds 
must figure in the narrative; but today and in other 
lands than Asia Minor, prayer books, hymnals and 
indeed sittings in a church or synagogue would answer 
just as well for illustrations. 

A large orthodox Jewish congregation in Manches- 
ter (England) some time ago passed a resolution not to 
admit usurers to membership; just as many Christian 
congregations are not willing to admit liquor sellers 
to the communion. Usury is not Jewish, drunkenness 
is not Christian, though many professors of either relig- 
ion may be found guilty of one or both of these 
offenses. Suggestive therapeutists, who are now very 
much in evidence, declare that niental treatment should 
be first of all moral treatment ; therefore, cases of thiev- 
ish proclivity can be undertaken just as readily and 
treated quite as successfully as cases of more ostensibly 
physical disorder. Though present false social stand- 
ards, and generally loose business ethics, have much to 
do with sanctioning and fostering dishonesty, it is always 
a vain attempt to seek, to move the large social or mer- 
cantile world, en masse seeing that all worlds are com- 
posed of units, but jridividual regeneration is a work in 
which we can all mtelligently engage. Utterly useless 
must it ever prove to treat people against the act of 
stealing so long as they desire to cheat their fellows. 
We must strike in this, as in all other instances, at the 
root of the noxious tree. We are entirely out of con- 
ceit with those reformatory barbers who use scissors, 
clippers and razors upon the hair of iniquity. Nothing 



io6 

short of a scientific depilatory which kills the root of a 
spurious growth can be of any solid benefit to human- 
ity. 

__Spiritual methods of treatment are m every case essen- 
tially radical, dealing with causes, not with effects, 
except resultantly. Precisely as it is with impure 
thoughts, which surely manifest sooner or later' in* 
external offenses against chastity, so it is with dishonest 
ambitions. The Ninth and Tenth Commandments follow 
close upon the Eighth, and it must ever prove extremely 
difficult, if not impossible, to strictly observe one, if we 
sin against any of the others. 

Again, let Sinai's trumpet cease to sound, and bid 
Zion's music greet our listening ears, for when we hear 
the new song or the old song with the new tone, "Thou 
shalt not steal" will convey to us the blissful confident 
assurance that we have reached a height where love of 
honesty entirely pervades our nature, and henceforth all 
thoughts, words, and acts of dishonor will have lost all 
fascination for us. 

Let us examine ourselves searchingly, and cast out 
every lingering remnant of dishonest desire to profit by 
our neighbor's loss; then will reciprocity, not competi- 
tion, be proved the law of true prosperity and the life of 
industry and honest love will manifest itself throughout 
the world in honest speech and trading. 



LECTURE TEN. 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 

"Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness" Against Thy 
Neighbor." 

Were we called upon to choose but one ^chapter from 
the entire Bible, from which to select the most abundant 
moral counsels, we might feel inclined to choose Levit- 
icus xix. This marvelous repository of the sublimest 
Jewish ethics says, "Speak unto the Children of Israel, 
saying, ye shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God am 
holy." Then a little later comes the provision for the 
poor and needy, which forbids the land-proprietor to 
gather for himself the gleanings of the harvest; these 
are to be left as a provision for those who are in need. 

Then follow the great injunctions which are so closely 
in line with the Ten Commandments, as found in Ex- 
odus xx., that they may well be called a sliehtlv differ- 



107 



ent literal, though essentially identical spiritual, version 
of the Decalogue. Truly it may be said that positive 
and negative statements are freely intermingled, but it is 
not possible to avoid negative commands altogether 
until we have risen from Sinai to Zion, and we are even 
today as peoples only on the road to the Messianic Era. 
in the face of the manifold injustices which still prevail 
even in the most civilized communities, the grand old 
prohibitions of the Mosaic Law need constantly to be 
resounded. Would that Sinai's thunders might once for 
all be hushed and our ears attuned forevermore to 
Zion's tender whispers; but present conditions need 
trumpet-tongued prophets as well as silver-tongued 
orators; and though the golden voice of the Messiah 
is the only voice which is heard in the celestial heavens, 
the earths of today need to be convulsed with tones of 
living thunder. 

Let us remember, however, that always and every- 
where there are at least two tones audible in the same 
reverberation. The undertone we are all familiar with, 
but the overtone we have not so often heard. Sinai's 
undertones are never unaccompanied by overtones. 
Let us listen diligently, that we may hear through the 
former the dulcet cadence of the latter. "Ye shall not 
steal nor deal falsely, nor lie one to another." If we 
are at the base of the mountain, we shall be awe- 
stricken when we hear those prohibitions, for they must 
needs strike terror into guilty hearts, for when con- 
science smites us with its disapproval, it does indeed 
make cowards of us all. 

Moses and Shakespeare frequently keep very close 
together. But if we have ascended far up toward the 
mountain peak, or if we are within the mountain's 
heart and hear the echo of the detonating thunder as it 
reaches the quiet peaceful chambers of the sanctuary 
within, we shall not hear threatenings nor condemna- 
tions, but sweet assurances unto Israel— promises made 
to the holy ones that because of their love of holiness, 
nothing false or vile can possibly overcome them. 

Though others steal, yet Israel shall be honest ; though 
others lie, yet Israel shall be truthful; how else can 
Israel's mission be fulfilled as enlightener of all the fam- 
ilies of humanity? The code of morals is surely very 
high, and greatly m need of enforcement today This 
insists that no workman shall be defrauded of even a 
fraction of his hire, and that no undue respect shall be 
shown to the rich, nor contempt showered upon the 
poor; and to cap the climax of practical morality the 



io8 



words must be vigorously enforced, "Thou shalt not go 
up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people." 

Gossips are of ancient date. No literature fails to 
mention them, and the venerable Pentateuch especially 
protests against any continuance of their nefarious 
occupation. "Thou shalt not hate thy neighbor in thy 
heart," comes first as a precept, and quickly following 
it we read, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
Among these superlatively grand and most important 
counsels are many ritual injunctions which, unless spir- 
itually interpreted, may well be supposed to relate to 
other times than these; but of those we are not now 
called upon to speak. 

Still reading Leviticus xix, we find that there is 
absolutely no justification therein for the ignorant sup- 
position so often trumpeted abroad, that prior to the 
advent of Christianity a neighbor meant only a co-pa- 
triot or co-religionist. That such a statement is abso- 
lutely false to history, is positively proved by these words 
(Verse 34) : "The stranger that dwelleth with you shall 
be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love 
him as thyself." Those sublime words are in the King 
James version, and therefore have been for nearly three 
hundred years in the vernacular of all English speaking 
readers of the Bible; whence, then, can have arisen the 
false charge against early Judaism, that it did not coun- 
sel the lovely doctrine so touchingly illustrated by the 
blessed Jesus, when, after relating the incident of the 
Good Samaritan who helped a man not of his own race 
or religion, he said to all who enquired of him concern- 
ing the neighbor, "Go thou and do likewise." 

The time is already come for a complete and thor- 
oughly honest re-statement of Christian doctrine, and 
in the course of this restatement no honor need be 
taken from the historic Christ, for the evangelists all 
report him as having declared that he came to fulfill the 
ancient law, and God's law is fulfillable only m love.^ Ye 
shall do no unrighteousness. Just balances, just weights 
shall ye have." 

However important may be the just weight and 
the "just balance" in the market place, and however 
commendable the theology of the brusque English 
Unitarian who, when asked what is included m the 
Unitarian's creed, promptly replied, "One God no 
devil and twenty shillings to the pound," as students 
of causation we are not content with mere external 
or formal morality and therefore know that one hun- 
dred cents to the dollar and sixteen ounces to the 



109 

pound weight can never meet the full requirements of 
the moral law which inveighs against secret hate and 
insists upon open love. 

It is always pitiable on the twenty-second of Febru- 
ary to hear simply that George Washington never told 
a he, for if the eulogist who is making the anniversary 
speech says no more than that, some wag may well 
enquire, "Was he dumb, sir?" and thereby create a 
boisterous outburst of laughter in a popular assembly. 
"Washington always told the truth," is a good introduc- 
tion to a panegyric, and if the theme be well devel- 
oped any orator of average ability can quickly rise to 
heights of real sublimity when describing the character 
of a true hero, of whom it has been proudly said that he 
was first in peace and in the affection of his country- 
men. 

When in "Looking Backward" Edward Bellamy 
took occasion to remark that by the close of the twen- 
tieth century the Ten Commandments might no 
longer be employed in their present largely negative 
form, some doughty champions of the letter who do not 
seem to have caught much of the spirit of the Deca- 
logue, assailed Bellamy for having spoken disrespect- 
fully of the Mosaic Law. . 

About 1890 when "Looking Backward" was the lit- 
erary sensation of the hour, we gave a course of lec- 
tures m San Francisco on "Old and New Sociology" 
which attracted very large audiences and in which we 
boldly said that Bellamy could fearlesslv confront 
Moses; yea, that he could stand unabashed in the pres- 
ence of the God of Moses, if his chief offense had been 
re-translating the Commandments and telling the chil- 
dren of the present day that a hundred years hence in 
synagogues and churches they might hear, "Thou shalt 
be honest," and "Thou shalt bear true witness concern- 
ing thy neighbor," in place of the old phrases which 
counsel us against the practices of theft and lying, 
which we may well hope will have become obsolete and 
forgotten at a time when regenerated Boston shall 
have long since abolished the Charlestown jail and con- 
verted every North End slum into a district fully 
as beautiful as the present highly lauded Back Bay dis- 
trict. The letter of the law is often called the burden- 
some yoke of the Torah. Nothing has served during 
recent years to bring the folly of extreme literalism 
more prominently before the novel-reading and the- 
atre-frequenting populace than Israel Zangwill's highly 
dramatic story, "The Children of the Ghetto." for beauti- 



no 



ful, saintly, heroic, almost divine, and withal exquisitely 
true to real life, though the character of "Rabbi Shem- 
uel" undoubtedly is, the fanatical mistake of a too literal 
interpretation of the law concerning a divorce which 
follows no real marriage, but only a farcial substitute, is 
plainly evident to every honest casuist. 

We can truly admire devotion to ideals and the brave 
spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake of principle, but fanat- 
icism unfortunately is blear-eyed. It confounds super- 
stition with conviction, and does not rest on the rocky 
foundation of abiding truth, but only on the slippery 
sand of ever-changing legalism. 

The Ninth Commandment seems to many people 
apparently no more than a simple protest against lying, 
for the bearing of false witness is assuredly the telling 
of some untruth; but from a metaphysical viewpoint the 
precept reaches immeasurably deeper than the tongue. 
We should never refrain from embracing an opportunity 
to declare that it soon becomes impossible to altogether 
control the tongue if the thoughts which lead on to 
speech, are permitted to roam and revel in fields of 
error or revenge. 

The entire tragedy of "Othello" is the Shakespearian 
protest against giving ear to slander. "Emilia," the 
sweet, pure-minded woman, has no inclination to 
believe in "Desdemona's" guilt, but the invention of the 
treacherous "Iago" is accepted as truth by "Othello," 
because this "Moor of Venice" has permitted the bitter 
seed of jealousy or foul suspicion to take root in his 
too impassioned spirit. 

It is only a very short and easy step from listening 
to slander, to repeating it, and an equally brief and sim- 
ple step from repeating what may or may not be true to 
inventing what is unquestionably false. How piteous 
must be the mental state of those poor simpletons who 
think they are doing the cause of virtue a service by 
dwelling upon every report of alleged transgression and 
blackening their neighbors' reputations in the fond hope 
that they are downing vice thereby. It would be unchar- 
itable, and perhaps unjust also, to accuse every scandal 
monger of a deliberate desire to injure others or to 
build up self upon the ruins of another's downfall, but 
it is indeed difficult to believe that slander and detrac- 
tion can be animated by any real wish to serve the cause 
of honor or purity. 

We know that in some respects we are open to the 
charge of being "extremists," and it may be one of oui 
extremisms to protest most vigorously against giving 



Ill 



ear to vituperation; but so great is the wrong done to 
the innocent, and so many are the malicious lies spread 
and multiplied by heeding slanderous tales, that we are 
willing to be counted among those who contend that no 
accusation against anyone should be heeded by anyone 
who wishes to excel as a genuine spiritual healer 

What sort of spectacle do "reformers" exhibit to the 
world when backbiting one another? How can any 
intelligent person expect the cause of universal peace 
and arbitration to be truly promoted so long as the 
worst possible motives are attributed to those who have 
not yet learned a more excellent way, and are therefore 
still engaged in the unrighteous course of warfare? 
Is it reasonable to hope that intelligent penetrative 
intellects will feel disposed to ally themselves with new 
organizations (which often promise much but accom- 
plish little) so long as the worst elements from which 
they hoped to flee when they cut loose from ancient 
institutions, are seen to grow and thrive in each new- 
fangled seminary? 

There may be conferences, conventions, convocations 
without limit m the avowed interest of "new" "pro- 
gressive," "higher," "advanced," "metaphysical" ' and all 
other kinds of thought, but if the milk of human kind- 
ness be absent from the proffered banquet, all the intel- 
lectual dainties on the bountifully spread board will fail 
to hold, even should they succeed in attracting, genuine 
whole-souled truth-seekers to the novel feast. 

Vegetarianism and anti-vivisectionism are presum- 
ably outcomes of very tender feeling, and have for their 
principal object the humanizing and softening of the 
human race; yet only too often do we find the pub- 
lished utterances of vegetarians and anti-vivisectioniats 
just as belligerent as was the stupid condemnation of 
men m general which used to characterize quite a con- 
siderable percentage of speeches and tracts devoted to 
the excellent cause of equal suffrage. "Oh, how they 
quarreled at the peace meeting" provokes a laugh natu- 
rally, because of the absurd incongruity of the situa- 
tion ; but we who are seeking to truly advance the cause 
of peace and good-will among the nations of the earth 
must take a more serious view of so hideous an anom- 
aly than to laugh at it. 

How, in the name of reason, are we going to put down 
war by stirring up the fierce passions of mutual hos- 
tility which alone make conflict possible? We most ear- 
nestly feel that we are helping to fulfill a divine mission 



112 



whenever we protest that such measures as border on the 
fringe of a breach of the Ninth Commandment must be 
overcome by the adoption of a new and living way of 
salvation vs. condemnation. Let it once be known that 
scolding does not right wrongs or sweeten dispositions, 
and once let it be admitted that to scatter evil is not to 
destroy it, then we shall soon be well on the road to the 
accomplishment of those great and glorious reforms 
which now loom large in our ideal horizons, and which 
we should all co-operate to actualize as quickly as pos- 
sible. 

To encourage slander or evil-speaking of any sort is 
to countenance far more lying than most people seem to 
suppose. The only strictly safe course is to turn a 
totally deaf ear to all damaging reports which may be 
brought to us. It is no rebuke to a slanderer to appear 
shocked and to exclaim, "Oh ; you don't say so !" or "I 
never could have believed it!" 

Drastic treatment is needed for the vilifier, and no 
drastic measure is so effective as to let the scandal 
monger plainly see that we look with contempt on every 
foul report or unclean insinuation. Practitioners of 
mental healing are powerless to effect any real improve- 
ment in moral conditions, so long as they make pictures 
of immorality and gaze upon these in their own subjec- 
tive consciousness. 

No wandering boy is ever led home as a. repentant 
prodigal because somebody sang "Where is my wander- 
ing boy tonight?" but millions of wanderers can be 
drawn home by such fathers as the gracious man in the 
story of the prodigal son, who was out on the road 
ready to receive and welcome his son whenever he put 
in. an appearance. Such sentences as "Once he was 
pure" and "Tell him with all his blight I love him 
still," are sickly ebulitions of maudlin sentiment, not 
strong suggestions which truly help the weak and falter- 
ing to resist temptation or grow strong to conquer it in 
future if in an hour of weakness they may have ignor- 
antly yielded to a tempter. 

If you give a boy or girl a good reputation to live up 
to, even though the child may not yet fully deserve it, 
it surely serves as a beacon to lure the youthful mind 
to nobler attainments, while a bad reputation to live 
down to, is the greatest curse which a growing charac- 
ter can possibly have to contend against. Many sup- 
posedlv pious people pry about, watching every move- 
ment of the people upon whom they spy, and then report 



H3 



the most shameful tales, usually highly exaggerated, 
even when (which is but seldom) there is any actual 
foundation for the story in demonstrable fact. 

A young man, five feet nine inches in height, about 
twenty-two years of age, wearing a light overcoat, was 
seen going into a saloon in a dim light; straightway a 
mother, whose son would answer to that vague general 
description, was told that her darling boy, the idol of 
her heart, was fast becoming a confirmed drunkard, 
gambler, or something else disgraceful. The wretch 
who told the mother this was a "good pious deacon," or 
one of the superlatively sanctified "oyster-and-ice- 
cream-women," without whose valuable assistance 
many a struggling church would go to pieces. Because 
"dear Mrs. Smeethe" or "pious Mr.. Broone" has said 
this horrible thing it is accepted as true; therefore poor 
confiding "Mrs. Jones' " heart is broken. Of course, it 
is all in vain that "Charlie Jones," when charged with 
breaking his widowed mother's heart, protests, "It must 
have been some other fellow who resembles 
me, for I was out of town on business for the firm 
which employs me on the evening in question." Any 
confession of innocence on "Charlie's" part is but a 
fresh arrow thrust into his mother's lacerated side, 
for in her distorted Smeethe & Broome obsessed vision, 
this is but a proof that her "fallen" boy (once so virtu- 
ous) is a liar as well as a drunkard, a gambler, and 
heaven (rather hell) only knows what else that is most 
terrible. 

False witness would soon become extinct, lying would 
soon sink into innocuous desuetude, if there were more 
members in the holy congregation of "Deaf Adders" 
when scandal is on the breeze. But, say many, some one 
surely does wrong in the world or no outrages could be 
perpetrated. Verily, such is the case, but guilty Ester- 
hazy and Paty du Clam, not innocent Alfred Dreyfus, 
bring railing accusations. The accuser, not the accused 
is usually the culprit ; it will be a happy day for morals 
when the world awakes to the acknowledgement of this 
certainty. 

Lies are told to cover offenses; cowardice prompts 
offenders to shift blame in hope of escaping punishment. 
God's judgments are certainly not man's judgments, for 
man looks only on the surface, while God is the supreme 
reader of all hearts. A boy or girl at school spills some 
ink and stains a desk or carpet. Fear of the punishment 



U4 



which will surely follow either detection or confession 
causes many a timid, shrinking child to search for some 
one on whom to throw -the blame, and as animals are 
dumb (so far as human language is concerned) a cat 
or dog serves as an efficient scapegoat. "Please, teacher, 
the cat got onto the table and overturned the ink," 
sounds plausible, so poor pussy gets a vicarious thrash- 
ing and the poor blind teacher mumbles the scripture, 
"Be sure your sin will find you out;" but because of her 
lack of penetrativeness some child has taken a first les- 
son in the iniquitous doctrine of vicarious punishment. 

Penalties are frequently altogether out of proportion 
to offenses ; because of this many a trembling weakling 
accuses an innocent person who cannot well defend 
himself, not out of deliberate malice, but solely in order 
to escape unreasonable, though not entirely unmerited, 
punishment. Such chastisement or correction as may 
suffice to lead a child to avoid mistakes in future is 
kindly and remedial, but wise loving reproof never 
engenders falsehood because it serves to develop the 
sublime spirit embodied in the beautiful character of 
"Feraz" in Marie Corelli's marvelous romance, "The 
Soul of Lilith" in which a highly estimable and love- 
able young man is represented as praying that he may 
receive his full share of all needed chastisement. 

Falsehood cannot stand in the presence of truth. No 
brazen-faced effrontery can outgaze the calm, searching 
glance of thoroughly truthful eyes. The teacher who 
can truly affirm, "I always know the truth when I hear 
it," is one whose influence for good among young people 
will prove boundless. Tale-bearing and listening to 
talebearers is quite sufficient to render any legitimate or 
reliable development of clairvoyance or psychometry 
impossible, for the subself (more correctly superself) 
which is the seat of psychic perceptiveness, is never 
known or heeded by those who depend upon exterior 
means of information concerning the characters of those 
around them. 

Concerning references, > testimonials, etc., etc., there 
is nothing so encouraging to falsehood as to place 
dependence upon what may be easily manufactured 
spuriously. So called "gilt-edged" or "A i" references 
are snares and pitfalls for the unwary, but so blind are 
many to all sense of character delineation at first hand, 
that they positively encourage deception in all its forms 
simply by their own stupidity in failing to observe pal- 
pable indications. 

Spiritualists often raise a great cry over pretenders in 
their ranks, but fraud continues to flourish in many 
places just because some one else's word pro or con is 



H5 

taken in nearly every instance. Psychical Research 
Societies are capable of doing really valuable work by 
pursuing investigations along lines of dispassionate scien- 
tific examination, but not even Crookes, James, Hyslop, 
Hodgson, or any other honored name is sufficient to 
vouch for evidence save such as these capable men have 
themselves individually accumulated. 

4<L not mean to impty that evidential testimony 
is useless ; far from it ; but we do maintain that in order 
to become true scientists, we must learn to use our indi- 
vidual faculty of discernment, thereby culturing the pro- 
phetic faculty which inheres in every one of us. To 
simply decry lying and false swearing will never put 
these noxious weeds to death, because the people who 
indulge most in these abominations are the least heroic 
m the community, and in consequence of their lack of 
moral feeling they are not reached by simple condemna- 
tion of an offense against social order. But once let 
those culprits know that it is all in vain that they utter 
falsehoods, then even simple self-interest will lead them 
to take the first step toward moral growth— discontin- 
uance of the pernicious practices in which they for- 
merly indulged. 

False witness is often borne rather to shield an 
offender than for the malicious end of condemning the 
innocent. Cowardice, and nothing really worse than 
cowardice, lies at the root of an immense amount of 
untruthful testimony, and a coward only needs to be 
assured that his mendacity can prove of no avail in the 
face of a penetrating spiritual vision which knows inno- 
cence wherever it sees it, and therefore cannot believe 
guilt to be at the door of one who is offenseless. 

It does absolutely no good to punish people in an 
arbitrary way, for telling falsehoods, because such pun- 
ishments as are generally meted out by irascible persons 
(particularly to children) only serve to encourage clan- 
destine manoeuverings to accomplish wrong and evade 
detection. Moral mental treatment suggests to whoever 
has spoken falsely, "you love truth inwardly, you can 
and you will speak truth and truth only henceforward 
You love your neighbor even as you love yourself, and 
you know that all human interests are served by truth 
and by truth only." ' 

It is never necessary to confine oneself, when giving 
mental treatment, to any rigid form of printed or 
remembered words, but the above terse sentences may 
serve as a guide to many who are earnestly endeavoring 
to lead children (and adults also) out of the quagmire 
of falsehood on to the lofty eminence of unsullied 
truth. Love of truth must precede speaking truth, 



n6 

therefore the moral educator alone can exert a decided 
influence in ridding the world of the bitter curse of 
evil speaking which is the fruitful source of unmeasured 
misery. 

"I consecrate all my vocal organs to the service of 
unsullied truth," is a very helpful affirmation. Any 
such mental ejaculation will be found in numberless 
instances of priceless value in aiding travelers toward 
the hill of Zion to reach the lightcrowned summit, 
standing on which they can jubilantly exclaim "We all 
love to speak the truth, ever— one concerning his neigh- 
bor." 



LECTURE ELEVEN. 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 

"Thou Shalt Not Covet Anything That Is Thy Neigh- 
bor's." 

Vv^e have now reached the crown of the Decalogue 
and are called upon to consider a commandment, the 
import of which is so vast that its purely spiritual or 
metaphysical character is clearly self-evident. The 
other nine commandments may be taken by literalists to 
have reference only, or chiefly, to external conduct, such 
as is comprised in speech and action, but _coyetousness 
is no outward or visible offense. It is of the inner nature 
and pertains to thought and affection, not to word and 
action. It is, therefore, a secret sin, and as such fre- 
quently passes unnoticed and uncondemned, when 
offenses of all overt characters are speedily denounced 
by sticklers for the Law's literal observance. When we 
read the thrilling words in one of the New Testament 
epistles "He who breaks the Law at one point is guilty 
of all," we feel disposed to think that the writer of that 
searching indictment must have had the Tenth Com- 
mandment especially in mind. 

It is always some secret offense which undermines 
virtue most completely, because it carries on its stealthy 
occupation of destruction unsuspected and unmolested. 
We are not bringing a railing accusation against those 
who sin in thought, for oftentimes they know not that 
mental iniquities are of any serious consequence. Owing 
to the intense and truly barbaric devotion still paid to 
mere externals, children are allowed to grow up, as a 
rule, without anything approaching an adequate idea of 
the importance of thought as a fashioner of external 
conditions. "As a man thmketh in his heart so is he," 



ii7 



clearly means not only that God sees and reads the 
heart, and. that all spiritual judgments are passed from 
interior discernment, instead of from outward observa- 
tion, but additionally to this, that every secret unsus- 
pected thought makes for outward" expression" as it 
weaves its characteristic clothing, and renders inevitable 
through the incessant working of, the law of correspond- 
ences, an exterior body which is in the likeness of the 
formative mind. 

Leaving the strictly ethical or severely moral aspects 
of 'the sin of covetousness, we ought, as scientific think- 
ers, to dwell much upon the effect of thought, not only 
upon bodily health but equally upon ulterior circum- 
stances. Twenty or fewer years ago when the "craze" 
for mental healing was in its youthful bloom all over 
the United States far too many people were carried away 
with a superficial theory of treatment which began and 
ended with the hope that, in some mysterious manner, 
a panacea might be found for physical suffering in 
some strange system of thought and practice which 
delighted, while it bewildered, the multitude by its nov- 
elty and incomprehensibility. Thousands of men and 
women paid large prices for a course of instruction 
consisting of twelve lessons in Christian Science, and 
then went to work to heal everybody who was ailing, 
and we all know that great success and also pitiable 
failures have been chronicled in their history. 

Today there is great interest manifest in treatments 
for overcoming poverty as well as sickness, and many 
metaphysical teachers and practitioners do not hesitate 
to say that poverty and sickness are all of a piece, so 
that if one can be cured so can the other. There is 
logical historic continuity revealed in this special inter- 
est in two quite distinct, but closely related, realms of 
mental action — conquest over sickness and over pov- 
erty. Great significance attaches to the fact that it was 
first sickness, then poverty which people sought to van- 
quish by mental methods, for yve must first become 
superior, within ourselves, to the action of adverse con- 
ditions, before we are in any way ready to control envi- 
ronments. 

Covetousness is one of the greatest imaginable draw- 
backs to success in every line of enterprise, because the 
covetous person is perpetually looking outside of self and 
wishing to appropriate what is now in the possession of 
some other human being. Strong, searching, teaching, 
touched m the plainest possible language is specially 
needed on this subject. Straws show in which way the 
current is flowing, and very conspicuous and suggestive 
"straws" are frequently in evidence as we listen to the 



n8 

casual remarks of persons who are in no way malicious, 
but who are continually wishing that they possessed 
something which is now in the keeping of another. It 
is pitiable to observe the crying injustice in the world, 
which no one seems to know how to rectify, unless it be 
a few thoroughgoing metaphysicians who are looked 
upon as heartless oftentimes by screeching and gush- 
ing fraternities, because they insist that no screaming 
against present inequality will ever bring about a condi- 
tion of equality. However equal we may be essentially 
and potentially, we are at present extremely unequal in 
our grasp upon great fundamental principles of univer- 
sal law and order. Whenever one covets what another 
holds he accuses himself of incompetency or inefficiency, 
because he confesses to wanting something he is unable 
to fashion, evolve, or lawfully attract. There is no nig- 
gardliness in the scheme of Nature or in the Mature of 
Things; no great teacher has ever taught parsimony or 
counseled envy. 

We read in the gospels that when several thousands 
of men, women, and children were hungry, Jesus multi- 
plied bread and fish to such an extent that when every- 
one had been fully satisfied twelve basketfuls of over- 
plus were collected by disciples of the great wonder- 
worker who had thus marvelously supplied a multitude 
with sustenances even in a desert. 

We know well enough that "higher criticism" seeks 
to effectually dispose of the letter of every alleged mir- 
acle, and leaves only the spiritual lesson which a signi- 
ficant fable or poem may convey., We have no quarrel 
with "higher critics" in this respect, because we are as 
fully aware as they that the letter of an ancient story is 
of no great value at best to the people* of today. At the 
same time we see no reason for denying the possibility 
of even literal occurrences not necessarily supernatural, 
but so unusual as to appear such to the spectators of 
mysterious phenomena. A widespread foolish ten- 
dency to limit Nature is a source of endless contro- 
versy and dispute. 

Modern Psychism is throwing new light on ancient 
magic and alchemy, and we are beginning to strip the 
mysterious very largely of its long-time covering of 
out-and-out supernaturalism. But our immediate task is 
not to enter deeply into the ever fruitful topic of "mif 1 
acles" but only to show how far we may, by eradicating 
covetousness, attain to a healthy happy estate of (at 
least) comparative opulence, instead of remaining fixed 
in the chronic wretchedness of hopeless poverty in which 
so many well-meaning people are held today. 



H9 



Covetousness is in itself sufficient to account for a 
very large percentage of all the non-success which now 
afflicts the race. "I wish I had her hair," says some 
innocent maiden gazing out of a window onto a street 
along which is passing a radiant girl whose magnificent 
tresses are freely exposed to the view of all beholders. 
The girl behind the window has no intention of surrep- 
titiously depriving the object of her admiration of her 
luxuriant hair, but she is, all unconsciously, weakening 
her own thin locks by throwing a portion of her force 
or energy into the foolish and anti-social desire to pos- 
sess some other maiden's tresses. As years pass on it 
is some one else's house, carriage, position, friends, 
reputation, or even husband, which may be coveted, 
and the poor coveter, all unknowingly, is depleting her 
own exchequer and wasting her opportunities of legiti- 
mate enrichment by hankering after something belong- 
ing to another, instead of setting studiously to work to 
build up her own self-conscious womanhood to the 
extent of drawing to herself everything necessary to her 
health, happiness and usefulness. The wildest crimes 
are often committed as final consequences of covetous- 
ness; but even when no criminal act is even contem- 
plated, there is a constant drain of vitality resulting 
from the wish to take from others instead of so build- 
ing up oneself that the magnet within shall attract all 
that is desirable. 

Nations begin to grow weak internally the very 
instant they begin to covet the territory of other nations. 
Discontent and atrophy, together with many flagrant 
immoralities, quickly result from seeking to subdue other 
countries in place of building up one's native land or 
the country of one's adoption. America has, in our 
opinion, recently made some serious blunders, andj 
though we bring no fierce accusations against the pres- 
ent or any past administration, we do not hesitate to 
say, that if a spirit of desire to annex unwilling peoples 
shall be fostered in the United States, it will prove a 
thorn in Columbia's side, and hinder her advancement 
toward her predestined goal of internal wealth and con- 
summate civilization. Though it seems that some chil- 
dren are born with greater momentum than others, con- 
sequently some achieve greatness in any line more read- 
ily than do others, there is enough vitality in every one 
of us to bear us forward to a very considerable meas- 
ure of success, if we would but give up, once for all, the 
old wretched spirit of dependence upon fate, hick, chance 
or fortune, which is too many people's evil genius, 
though a supposed divinity. 



120 



The great commercial success of the Jewish people is 
very largely attributable to their very general conviction 
that they have, within themselves, unusual ability to con- 
trol finance and lead in scientific, literary, and art direc- 
tions. Anti-Semitic agitators and their dupes are a set 
of weaklings who feel deeply their own innate power- 
lessness to fairly compete with the Sons of Israel, so 
they must tell falsehoods, fling mud and call a man a 
"parasite" who has a larger measure of self-confidence 
than their petty selves. Jews are often oppressive and 
not always amiable, but they are on the whole self con- 
fident, persevering and industrious, and seek far more to 
build themselves up than to pull their neighbors down. 
The clannishness, of which the typical "Ghetto" Jew is 
constantly accused, is,' in itself, a mark of strength, 
for it stands for co-operation and reciprocity vs mutual 
hatred and disdain. 

No body of people is wholly free from covetousness, 
so there are unsuccessful and puny Jews as well as 
Gentiles, but Israel's heritage has ever been the Torah of 
which the Decalogue is the veritable quintessence. 
Scientifically speaking, every thought or desire fixed 
upon some ulterior object, now in the possession of 
another, sets up a discordant vibration within the system 
of the one who covets, and the effect of all discord is 
destructive to the very fibre and tissue of the interiors 
of the human organism. 

Music can be employed most successfully as a heal- 
ing agent by any strong healthy musician who feels har- 
mony and then reproduces it externally. _ Energy is 
lost, strength is frittered away by permitting, even in 
the smallest degree, the injurious thought that your 
success means some one else's failure, or that some one 
else's victory signals your defeat. There is a physio- 
logical accompanying a psychological deterioration con- 
tinually going on within the gambler ; all games_of 
chance are weakening because they engender the hope 
that something may be obtained by chance instead 
of by honest effort. All great prophets in olden times 
rebuked high officials in church and state indiscrimi- 
nately. Josiah found the grossest wickedness in the high- 
est places and scrupled not to say so.. We must there- 
fore not be surprised to find that "holy" places are often 
nurseries of evil and incubators of the worst vices which 
infest society. What harm is there in a rnffle for a 
fancy quilt or picture? is a question frequently put to us 
by students. There is no actual dishonesty or unfair 
dealing provided the raffle is honorably conducted, but 
at its mildest, or in its least offensive form, it inculcates 
a doctrine diametrically opposed to the higher social eth- 



121 



ics. Why should I want ninety-nine people beside 
myself to pay one shilling, or twenty-five cents, toward 
an object worth 5 pounds or $25, which I hope to carry 
home for the adornment of my private dwelling, when I 
have done nothing whatever to earn that twenty-five 
dollar article, except put twenty-five cents, a single shil- 
ling, as ninety-nine others have done, into a lottery 
ticket? It is true that everybody in the hundred takes 
an equal chance, but we cannot build up noble charac- 
ter or successful business on a stable foundation so long 
as we believe in chance. "That's just my luck;" "Oh, 
you are a lucky dog," and many similar expressions, 
seemingly innocent, must all be vetoed before we can set 
to work to build from foundation to attic, or work 
from centre to circumference in the evolution of pros- 
perity. Every desire to get something for nothing 
weakens moral fibre and works against even financial 
opulence. The "poor relation," or the idle dependent 
relative in any household, quickly becomes degenerate, 
so do all people who are continuously worked for by 
others, who never think it proper to expect these polite 
paupers to work honorably for themselves. 

Ingratitude is not always so base as it appears ; this is 
instanced in the pathetic incident of Beethoven and his 
nephew. To pay a young man's gambling debts or 
to bring up a girl in idleness is not kindness, nor is it 
charity, therefore if the one who has been immorally 
trained, turns upon the trainer with ingratitude, if cen- 
sure must be meted out at all, both sides must be enti- 
tled to a portion of it— though to surface observers one 
looks the embodiment of all kindness and the other of 
all unrighteousness. If Henrik Ibsen had studied psy- 
chology more deeply he would have been less pessimistic 
in his dramas, and even as it is, his saddest plays are 
only gloomy commentaries upon the true old words, 
"whatever we sow we reap." 

Covetousness saps energy because it diverts the stream 
of vital force within the individual into an extraneous, 
therefore into an alien channel. If you are constantly 
gazing upon the house across the way and wishiug it were 
yours, instead of continuing to be the property of its 
present owner, your psychic energy crosses the street 
and accumulates on the other side of the road; if you 
keep this up for any considerable length of time or 
indulge the practice constantly, you may see yo/ir envied 
neighbor growing steadily wealthier while your pros- 
pects for ever owning a home of your own are steadily 
dwindling. If on the other hand you reason thus with 
yourself: "The man opposite has a good home and I am 
glad he has one, but I am going to have a good one, 



122 



too," you will be positively encouraged by his success, 
and your reasoning faculties remaining unbeclouded 
(growing indeed constantly more vigorous) you will 
soon begin to take practical steps to own your own cot- 
tage or maybe your own mansion. 

Successful people are self-centred, no matter what line 
of work they may pursue, and a self-centred person is 
far too busy with his own employments to fritter away 
time and energy in coveting his neighbor's goods., 
Churches are often covetous, but whenever covetousness 
invades a religious congregation, dissensions spring up, 
finances decline, and there is a general feeling of dissat- 
isfaction and desire on the part of the members to seek 
some other affiliation, while strangers visiting the build- 
ing are repelled instead of attracted by an "atmosphere," 
no matter how handsome the building, how fine the 
music, or how eloquent the sermon. 

A typical Dr. Wolf preaches to f-ull pews, but Dr. 
Bear addresses a glittering array of nearly empty 
benches. Straightway Dr. Bear begins to argue that Dr. 
Wolf is his enemy, for to his distorted mental vision, 
if Dr. Wolf could only be removed or silenced the 
"lupine" congregation would flock to Bruin's ministra- 
tions. Nothing of the sort, sir; you are totally mis- 
taken. Every preacher draws his own following, and 
there are many who would absent themselves from 
preaching altogether if Dr. Wolf retired, unless a suc- 
cessor filled his place who gave the public the same sort 
of mental nourishment. Popular preachers are not pop- 
ular because they preach in certain definite localities. 
Bishop Phillips Brooks was not listened to by constant 
multitudes because he preached in Boston, or because 
his pulpit was in Trinity Church, Copley Square, for he 
was followed by crowds wherever he" went, so much so 
that when church-wardens in several places complained 
to him of the paucity of church attendance, he answered 
guilelessly, "I think churches are very well attended, 
for wherever I go I find a large congregation." People 
did not go in crowds to listen to Rev. M. J. Savage 
when he was in Boston because he preached in an old 
church in West Newton street, which has since been 
demolished, for no sooner did that brilliant Unitarian 
go to New York than the old edifice in Boston became 
nearly empty, and was soon disposed of 10 another 
denomination, which very soon erected a new edifice 
on the site of the antiquated structure so long a cele- 
brated temple. 

For thirty years Dr. Joseph Parker drew vast 
crowds to the City Temple, Holborn Viaduct, but Lon- 
doners are not particularly fond of going to church in 



123 



that locality on Sundays, for it is an essentially commer- 
cial work-a-day center, and should a less attractive pul- 
pit orator than Mr. Campbell have taken Dr. Parker's 
place, it is very doubtful whether a large building in 
that locality could be even half filled at every service. 
Dr. Emil Hirsch in Chicago is the attraction at Sinai 
Temple, and were he to accept an offer to go to New 
York or any other city unless another man equally pow- 
erful and energetic should fill his place, Indiana Avenue 
and Twenty-second street would not continue such a 
very well-known liberal Jewish corner. Dr. Thomas, 
not McVicker's Theatre, in the same city was the attrac- 
tion in the heart of a business section for many years on 
Sundays. These illustrations are extremely trite, but 
they are very timely, for they serve (among hundreds of 
others) to convince every reflective intellect, that to covet 
another's position is the act of a consummate simpleton. 
Could you fill another's place even were you permitted to 
occupy it ? is a burning leading question. If we are wise 
we do not wish to be burdened with other people's 
duties, obligations or responsibilities, for we have quite 
enough to do to attend to our own engagements which 
are sufficiently onerous and continually increasing. 

Helen Wilmans, in "A Conquest of Poverty," has 
preached finely on the Tenth Commandment, though 
perhaps she has not even mentioned it, but in all her 
exhortations to her readers to develop their individual 
selfhood, she delivers a homily from the text, "Thou 
shalt not covet." Shallow scribbling concerning Bible 
inconsistencies has actually reached the point of imbe- 
cility when a writer has said that Paul, when writing to 
the Corinthians concerning spiritual gifts, directed peo- 
ple to covet them. What laughter such folly must 
occasion among theological students, to say nothing of 
professors of the Greek language, from which an unfor- 
tunate English translation has occasionally been made. 
Should this discourse fall into the hands of any one 
who is totally ignorant of the meaning of the disputed 
passage (I Cor. xii, 31) let him remember when he 
reads it, that "to desire earnestly," or "seek earnestly to 
obtain," would be a fair rendering of the original, and 
is in perfect consonance with the whole tenor of the clus- 
ter of chapters concerning spiritual endowments in 
which that particular verse is found. (Vide Revised 
Version for approximately accurate rendering.) But 
even had so illustrious a man as Paul the apostle coun- 
seled covetousness, it would only have proved the infer- 
iority of some of the teachings of Paul to the contents of 
the Mosaic Decalogue. It would be a fool's errand to 
run in search of lingual inaccuracies in the New Tes- 



124 



tament epistles wherewith to bolster up the divine Law, 
which needs no bolstering. Let us all start out with a 
new resolve — a sacred determination never to permit the 
slightest particle of covetousness to invade the sanc- 
tuary of our thoughts. Think how blessed it would be 
if every inhabitant of the world should arise tomorrow 
morning, free from all desire to take aught from the 
possessions of a neighbor, but each one appear inflamed 
with the ardent fire of true aspiration prompting each 
to become great, noble, successful, honorable, through 
well directed individual industry. Reciprocity^ (not 
competition) is the life of honest business. Universal 
co-operation alone will merge the many Trusts of today 
into one great Trust in the future, in which all the 
inhabitants of the earth will be mutually interested. 
Bellamy and other nineteenth-century prophets caught 
glimpses of the Golden Age to come, but "Nationalist 
Clubs" though they started with a great flourish of 
trumpets, soon became absorbed in other enterprises, 
because the monopolistic spirit was not absent from their 
internal management. We have to be content with the 
"boss," because many of us believe greatly in the power 
of the boss and (secret out) we should like to be 
bosses ourselves. 

Bossism feeds upon people who wish they could boss 
others while they oarticularly dislike to be bossed them- 
selves. False standards everywhere are the causes of the 
prevalent unrest and deep-seated misery which it is the 
province of Spiritual Science to overcome ; not by aping 
any false measures externally in vogue, but by stead- 
fastly adhering to those sublime interior principles of 
action for which all genuine metaphysicians unreserv- 
edly must stand. "Thou shalt not covet" can be Zion- 
ized as can all the other Commandments, and when from 
the heights of Zion we hear the new interpretation of 
the old command, there shall ring in our ears this blest 
enunciation, "Thou shalt ever rejoice in thy neighbor's 
welfare and thou shalt understand in thy heart that 
humanity is one even as God is one/'' 

Whatsoever blesses thy neighbor blesses thee, and 
whatever advanceth thy interest equally advanceth the 
welfare of all thy brethren. In the foregoing sentence 
the essential spirit of the ioth Commandment is suffi- 
ciently epitomized. 



125 

LECTURE TWELVE. 



ON THE HEIGHT OF ZION. 
"The Law Shall Go Forth from Zion." 
e In this concluding lecture we shall attempt to restate 
m simple graphic language a few of those fundamental 
postulates of Divine Science which we have expounded 
m some slight measure during the previous eleven dis- 
courses. We started in lecture one, with a general 
statement regarding- the plan and scope of such revela- 
tion as we may find accessible in our own day and 
related to our own life. 

We then proceeded in ten consecutive discourses to 
treat the Commandments one by one, not by any means 
adhering strictly to their literal meaning, though that 
could never be ignored ; now we come to divine realiza- 
tion when our sole endeavor is to construct and not 
destroy No Christian commentator seems shocked at 
the boldness of Paul where he says, "We are not under 
the law but under grace" and "the law was a school- 
master to bring us to the Christ." When descanting 
upon the glories of the Hill of Zion the same writer 
says We are not come unto Sinai" and then contrasts 
the burning, quaking mount with the "assembly and 
church of the first-born, whose names are written in 
Heaven. 

Though conviction may compel us to differ radically 
trom much teaching which has long passed muster as 
evangelical^ we are not in the least disposed to protest 
against a single line of what we conceive to have been 
the apostle Paul's intention when he wrote those stirring 
poetic words which have caused him to be regarded bv 
many as the red founder of acknowledged Christianity. 

Henry Wood m "Victor Sirenus" has given us a pic- 
ture of Saul of Tarsus, the intrepid pupil of the emi- 
nent rabban Gamaliel, which shows that fiery character 
to have been originally a fanatical, as well as an ultra- 
orthodox Jew. The seventy elders constituting the San- 
hedrim of whom Gamaliel was one, were no doubt at 
that period in history, far more liberal and gentle than 
their traducers have represented, but though Henry 
Wood is always a polished writer, never indulging in 
diatribe or harsh invective, we consider that in Victor 
Sirenus, he has been unnecessarily severe in dealing with 
the conventional Judaism of the time of Saul of Tarsus 
t There A 1 1 ? ave always been several parties among the 
Jews. All are familiar with the names of Pharisees and 
Saducees which occur so frequently in the gospels, and 



126 



all scholars speak of Essenians or Essenes as a third 
and by no means inoperative, though comparatively 
silent party. The venerable Rabbi Wise, for many years 
President of the Union Theological Seminary in Cin- 
cinnati, says that Jesus and his immediate disciples 
were Pharisees, and being on the inside as members of 
the Pharisaic body were more vehement in their denun- 
ciations of its hypocrisies than any outside agitators 
would have been. 

Such a man as Prof. Geo. Herron in his striking 
books on the present social and industrial state of civil- 
ization says far stronger things concerning churches and 
colleges than are usually uttered by people who have never 
been professors in either and who therefore only glean 
from hearsay what they report concerning ecclesiastical 
and academic life. 

It is only a Savonarola, or one of like spirit with him, 
who can scourge the church internally and bid it repent 
of its corruptions and return to its first love so that it 
be not swept from the face of the earth because of its 
transgressions. The greatest lesson obviously to be 
learned from the story of the conversion of Saul into 
Paul needed by the people of today, substantially reads 
thus : Give heed no longer to the external voices of 
priests and magistrates, but go thy own way from Da- 
mascus to Jerusalem and on the road between those cit- 
ies thou shalt see a light and hear a voice, and if thou 
art wise thou wilt turn toward that light, and reply to 
that voice, and thou wilt say unto the divine speaker 
who is breathing fresh knowledge of truth to thee, 
"Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth," and "Lord, 
what wilt thou have me to do." 

Outward voices are conflicting and, though ecclesi- 
astics may stickle for uniformity, unity is utterly impos- 
sible where conscience and reason are alike fettered and 
one cannot or dare not say his soul is his own. "This 
is exactly what it is not," the theologian at once 
exclaims, "for all souls belong to God, and you are 
responsible to the Almighty for your soul which is not 
your own, but your Creator's." If that were all that 
theologians told us, we should not rebel against their 
dictum, but they very quickly proceed to build up a 
sophistical edifice erected by subtle casuistry, in which 
they seek to imprison every would-be free-thinker on 
religious subects. For, say they, "Free thought is abom- 
inable and heresy is the worst of all offenses." ^ The 
world's thinkers have always brought a scathing indict- 
ment against prelatical hierarchies, accusing them of 
subverting morals and making the word of God of none 
effect through vain traditions. 



127 



iJJrf cannot as ethlCal teach ^s, sympathize in the 
least degree with systems which exalt creed above deed 
and make salvation depend upon belief in dogmas and 

coTs&^f T'r 11 ^' ^ than "Pon noble 
consistent self-evolved moral character. Society can 

h LS g ?u e l V6ry Wd l - without P riests and ^tuals, but 
L Li°$ eCeS 1 mward , moral stren ^ is lack- 

? 5? \ Nonconformity has developed a sturdier 
S °/ ? mk T than has * he Established Church of Eng- 

ah in a a ii mg AnH ^° r Ctl ?^ S °u f the En * lish Population 
all mall. And why has this been so? Surely because 
ever since 1662, and even before that great historic date 
the non-conforming element has been uncompromising'. 
Tnri Tarsus did not reject or repudiate spiritual 

IflT™^^ he u be ? an t0 preach " Ch ™t and H?m cru- 
cified, he only shook himself free of multiplied ances 
tral traditions which are to this very Ty the bane of 
Jew and Gentile equally in many places. If forms and 
ceremonies are regarded as optional, they are unobiec 

he shin no r t n ° ° ne haS a H l ht t0 teil his neighbo? that 
he shall not engage m such religious exercises as he 
conscientiously enjoys. Two eulogies could be pro- 

TruZ ed or?™ 6 d n 7 r by th ^ Same speaker without incon- 
gruity, one on Oliver Cromwell, the other on Sir 

^.T a \ M °? re ' prov L ded the P^egyrist had a suffi- 

S o/L e r be hlr V° ? Uly respect the inalienable 
rights of the Congregationahst on the one hand, and of 
the Roman Catholic on the other. Every one must find 
God and reach Heaven in his own way. The Holy Spirit 
is an indwelling enlightener, not an outside teacher 
1 he spirit withm not the institution without is the 
infallible guide to faith and practice, and as to the Bible 
men wrote the books which compose it as they were 
inspired to write, but books could have no existence 
WG c re ii n ? f ° r the mental activi *y of their authors. 

belt reliance and reliance upon God are ultimately 
identical, for though there is a shallow vaunting athe- 
ism which vainly imagines that to get rid of the idea of 
t-xod is to attain the very summit of human freedom, 
reason turns away affronted by such superficial sputter- 
ing and looks again to the idea of a Supreme Intelli- 
gence as the only solid ground of assurance that all that 
ts is good, therefore in reality there can be no evil per- 
manent in the Universe. 

M£ hr 4!li an "r Ci T- istS - C0 " s , tantly reitera te the words of 
Mrs. Eddy, God is principle, not person." We prefer to 
say God is principle revealed through person." Denials 
are always hampering; nothing so fetters the intellect or 
dwarfs the rising and expanding reason as to be told 



128 



emphatically by some one who professes to know more 
than others", that something is not so;" and though m the 
practical work of mental and spiritual healing, denials 
as well as affirmations have long occupied a prominent 
place, it has always been a decided part of our teaching 
to substitute affirmative for negative statements wher- 
ever possible. 

Take for instance the old foolish mischievous practice 
of frightening children. Lazy, impatient, irritable par- 
ents and nurses find it quicker, and therefore easier, to 
slap a child to box ears, to threaten with condign pun- 
ishment some trifling offense, than they find it to reason 
with the little ones and point out to them the more 
excellent way. The reputed "Devil" can always quote 
scripture according to a time honored proverb bo irom 
the book of Proverbs, Mr. Spankhard and Mrs. Ear- 
boxer profess to derive divine sanction for their egre- 
gious misconduct, "Spare the rod and spoil the child < is 
a trite adage but utterly misconstrued. The old Jewish 
idea of the "rod" was education; the Talmud m many 
places speaks of the dire penalties following parental 
neglect in the education of children. 

In the twenty-third Psalm we are all familiar with the 
accustomed reading, "Thy rod and thy staff they com- 
fort me." Surely no sane person supposes that comfort 
is to be derived from a birch rod or "cat o nine tails, 
but as rod is also a measure and the intention of educa- 
tion is to enable the educated to measure things with 
accuracy, we can easily see that the "rod" which meas- 
ures the holy city described in the Apocalypse may be 
identical with that rod which must not be spared m the 
bringing up of children. _ . / 

Suicide is today a formidable question m many places. 
It is not helpful to tell a. poor wretch" that some theolog- 
ical dogma dooms him to an endless hell if he dares to 
rashly throw himself into the realms unseen. Very 
quickly many archbishops and other dignitaries of the 
church may find themselves answered m one of two 
ways The one who is contemplating suicide will retort, 
"I don't believe in your hell anyway" or he is likely to 
exclaim from the pit of his wretchedness "If there be a 
hell in the hereafter, I don't believe it can be worse than 
the hell I'm in on earth already." France^ which has 
long professed to be a Christian country incarcerated 
Dreyfus for five years on Devil's Island, submitting him 
to the crudest torture, though absolutely nothing had 
been proved against him and there have been bombastic 
churchmen seeking to palliate or extenuate the enor- 
mity not only of that one offense but of numerous sim- 
ilar offenses. Christianity as institutionalized is no 



I2Q 



gospel of good tidings for all people. It is, on the con- 
trary, anything but delightful news for all who do not 
utterly submit to its arbitrary enforcements ; but that 
esoteric doctrine which Paul promulgated and which is 
tru^e Theosophy, is the soul or animating spirit of the 
Christian system even as it is the secret doctrine of all 
religions, the "mystery" of all ages by means of the 
knowledge of which alone can all creeds be interpreted 
and the internal essence of all doctrines be explained. 
Of one thing the sceptic may well rest assured, viz., that 
with the decay of the doctrines of exoteric religion 
scepticism will not be accepted as a substitute for relig- 
ion. Agnosticism may be a step, but as Felix Adler said 
long since, it is no finality. Psychical Research is not 
simply the "fad" of the hour, it is a conspicuous form 
taken by a deep and ineradicable determination on the 
part of earnest truth-seekers to peer below the surface 
and discover sub and super planes of human conscious- 
ness. Absolute fearlessness is essential to spiritual 
growth, but by fearlessness we do not mean rashness or 
incautiousness. A thoroughly fearless person is the only 
one who truly understands what the "fear of the Lord" 
really means, for such a one alone can understand the 
spiritual import of the lines, "With head erect and con- 
science clear, fear God and know no other fear." "The 
fear of man bringeth a snare." "Fear hath torment," 
"Perfect love casteth out fear," and many other equally 
well-known quotations suggest a dual line of reasoning 
on the part of the master-spirits of humanity; discrep- 
ancies may appear on the surface of their language, but 
contradictions in sentiment there are none. Fear in its 
noble ethical sense is simply reverence. 

To revere God is to be animated with the deepest pos- 
sible respect or reverence for righteousness, a word, 
which like holiness and a few others of equally univer- 
sal import, means nothing short of all that we feel to 
be good, pure, noble and worthy, consequently worship- 
ful. 

True worship is acknowledgement of worth. Wor- 
ship, adoration, or veneration (use which term we 
may) signifies devotion to an ideal; we are not terror- 
stricken or _ affrighted, but inspired with awe in the 
presence of incalculable sublimity. There are lower and 
higher planes of human development which must be duly 
acknowledged, but never confounded one with the other. 
People speak often of Law and Gospel as though the 
two were totally distinct, so much so that one has to be 
taken away and the other substituted. Such a miscon- 
ception of letter and spirit is radically false, for the 
spirit is within the letter; the literal shell needs only to 



130 



burst open that the indwelling spirit may stand revealed. 

The Beatitudes are in the Commandments and verily 
the blessings are in the curses. In the English book of 
Common Prayer there is a "Commination Service" 
appointed to be read in churches on Ash Wednesday 
(the first day of Lent)., This service contains a list of 
curses, as they are popularly termed, taken word for 
word from the Pentateuch. Among them are these 
sayings, "Cursed is he who removeth his neighbor's 
landmark" and "Cursed is every one who maketh the 
blind to go out of the way." Many gentle-hearted 
Christians have objected to this service, and striven for 
its discontinuance, some having even gone so far as to 
class these severe moral precepts with the altogether 
reprehensible damnatory clauses in the Athanasian 
Creed. Though willing to avow that the Beatitudes 
might well be substituted, we are still of the opinion 
that there are people even yet who may be benefitted by a 
recital of those tremendous words of condemnation 
leveled against unrighteousness. The mind which would 
class such strong, equitable ethical teaching with the 
hateful clauses in a creed which daringly condemns 
every unbeliever in an unfathomable mystery to endless 
perdition, and then inconsistently quotes Jesus, who 
says, "They who have done good shall go into life ever- 
lasting," must be possessed of a very feeble^ intellect 
and be singularly deficient in reasoning ability, for 
moral conduct and theological subtleties have not even 
a remote connection. If you are ready for Zion you have 
no further need for Sinai but if you are not yet ready 
for the spirit within you still need to hear the letter 
enunciated without. 

The question is sometimes raised by modern teach- 
ers : Which are you living under, Law or Gospel ? If an 
answer be intelligently given, it should be : According to 
that Law of which Gospel is the essence. 

Let us now look at the Nine Beatitudes and see how 
they compare with the Ten Commandments. 

The Sermon on the Mount presupposes prior spiritual 
elevation, for according to tradition it was only 
preached to a few disciples who had made the effort nec- 
essary to climb a steep incline to listen to it. The 
teacher on the hilltop begins at once with a startling 
declaration of supreme benediction, which when fairly 
translated reads, "Blessed are the petitioners for light; 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 

"Blessed are the poor in spirit" is a dubious phrasie 
which can either be made to agree in essence with the 
true original or can be taken as a premium placed on 
cowardice rather than on bravery. 



131 

"Poverty of spirit" means to many who hear of it 
nothing short of weak moral inefficiency, it is therefore 
suggestive of tame submission to existing injustice in 
place of sturdy uncompromising devotion to conviction 
at all hazards. 

"Blessed are the beggars for light," which is the 
exact equivalent of the Greek text according to many 
reputable scholars, conveys a meaning exactly synchro- 
nous with the full gist of the teaching attributed in the 
Synoptics to the great Teacher of righteousness to 
whom the saying is accredited. It is easy to justify a 
highly ethical interpretation of the conventional read- 
ing "poor in spirit" in strict consonance with the spirit 
which makes for arbitration and will not sanction war- 
fare; but no grander opening to the Sermon on the 
Mount has yet been suggested by a careful comparison 
of ancient Manuscripts than the version we have cited. 
Following directly upon this first blessing, we encoun- 
ter a second which harmonizes entirely with it. 
"Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be com- 
forted." Consolation for the distressed is the second 
note in the great preacher's inimitable sermon. If there 
be no balm of Gilead in your ministry you are a poor 
sermonizer indeed, for though you may sparkle and glit- 
ter, though your rhetoric and oratory may be unim- 
peachable, you display head without heart; you are in 
that case no healer. Without love, which is the very 
soul of healing ministry, you may well be likened unto 
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The third beati- 
tude is a conundrum to many. 

"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth." 
The future tense of the verb must loom large in that 
benediction or it has no literal import; but in its deeper 
meaning it is a wonderfully deep-sighted declaration 
that the true possessors of the land are those who truly 
enjoy it. If one is a chronic invalid, fed on water gruel 
and wheeled about in a bath chair, with no capacity for 
enjoying the widespread beauty of natural scenery all 
around, there is no true advantage in owning, in a legal 
sense, a wide domain. . Though we are advocates of 
Single Tax and recommend the works of Henry George 
to all our students, when we are drilling our classes in 
self-development and expounding true individuality we 
invariably say: Character first; possessions afterward. 
The greatest impediment in the way of carrying out use- 
ful and necessary reforms is the tendency, which is very 
strong with most people, to start at the wrong end of 
everything. Let's get the land first, say they, then we 
may set to work to develop character; to which we 
reply, sophistry. How do you propose to get anything 



132 



until you have first developed that inner force which 
will enable you to obtain it? The lamentable failure of 
hundreds of noble enterprises is due entirely to the 
false impression so widely entertained that we must first 
own something and then be something, while the exact 
truth is that we must first be something, then we can 
proceed to own all that is desirable for us to take pos- 
session of. Much private property soon becomes a toil 
and burden, for just so soon as one has accumulated 
much more than is sufficient for use and comfort, added 
possessions of a personal nature only involve additional 
care and the expenditure of energy on trifles pertaining 
to the estate which could far more enjoyably, as well as 
profitably, be expended on higher things. 

The fourth beatitude is a very searching one, "Blessed 
are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for 
they shall be filled." The clear inference from this is 
that the pursuit of equity should occupy our entire 
energy and be the summit of our desire. Throw your- 
selves entirely into the work of establishing righteous- 
ness within, and righteousness without must needs 
appear as an inevitable result, thus will you who become 
filled with equity overflow with righteous emanations 
and be blessed centres whence the contagion of health 
and virtue will stream to near and far. 

The fifth blessing, "Blessed are the merciful for they 
shall obtain mercy," is another probing utterance which 
does not seem to closely tally with commonplace, human 
experience. But when we consider so obvious a fact as 
echo, we cannot doubt that in the truest sense of all. we 
receive back to ourselves and into our own natures 
exactly what we are continually throwing forth to oth- 
ers. It would be utterly impossible for anyone to go 
out among resounding rocks and reverberating hills and 
though shouting love, truth, peace amid the solitudes, 
receive in response, hate, falsehood, warfare. If it be 
self-evident on the material plane that echo answers, as it 
must, giving us back precisely what we precipitate into 
the air; on the spiritual plane of our existence the law 
must needs work equally so that what we send forth 
in silence or in song, by word of mouth or on the cur- 
rents of the unseen atmosphere by secret thinking only, 
must return to us even with interest and compound 
interest. 

The sixth beatitude "Blessed are the pure in heart 
for they shall see God" means infinitely more than such 
a supposed sight of Deity as an introduction to a majes- 
tic personal ruler in the distant heavens would signify. 
The beatific vision or sight of God need not be asso- 
ciated with any anthropomorphic or other definable 



133 



view of the Supreme Being, but when perfectly unsul- 
lied love shall enable us to see with clarified vision the 
Great Reality as good and good only, all devilish con- 
ceptions will have ceased from our beliefs concerning the 
essential nature of the universe and we shall come to 
know that good is all in all. That is not destructive 
atheism which only refuses to profess faith in what its 
professor does not understand; infidelity is a far differ- 
ent vice from its ecclesiastical definition, for no one is 
ap mfidel_ who loves truth, and no one is shut out from 
a perception of Deity who loves and wishes to promote 
the sway of righteousness. To see one God and all in 
God, is to be freed from all illusion, to have penetrated 
the veil of sense to be no longer in the pronoas hav- 
ing passed into the adytum of the universal temple. 
Perfect purity of affection is the only key to bliss inef- 
fable. 

The ^seventh beatitude, "Blessed are the peace- 
makers" is indeed a searching one, and had we oppor- 
tunity we should halt long enough to deliver a lengthy 
lecture on this momentous sentence; but limited space 
necessitating the most hurried treatment of all these 
glorious sentences, we content ourselves with asking 
every reader to meditate often and deeply on the ques- 
tion : What is it to be a peacemaker? Were peace 
already made we could not be called upon to make it. 
Peace is the exception, not the rule, on earth at present, 
but if we are lovers of peace and therefore wishful to 
establish peace where it has not yet been established, 
we must be prepared to bring it into existence by dwell- 
ing m peace ourselves, even in the midst of turmoil. 

The old sayng that it takes two to make a quarrel, is 
altogether accurate, for one person cannot quarrel much 
alone. Do not permit yourselves to admit into your 
consciousness the thought of surrounding inharmony, 
for every time you permit an inharmonious vibration 
from without to jar upon you in your sanctuary within, 
you have communicated with the spirit of discord, and 
let into your own dwelling the demon of strife you are 
vainly seeking to exorcise from the outside world. 
Peace societies do not accomplish all the good they 
might, because they fight against warfare instead of 
steadily generating a peace spirit which will quench the 
flames of war and lure the hearts, consciences, and 
mmds of men and nations to seek for peace instead of 
continuing belligerent. 

Avowed metaphysicians ought to stand boldly for 
peace. Published reports of squabbles in law courts 
between Christian Scientists only serve to convince the 
reasoning enquiring public that personal idolatry, no 



134 



matter whether directed to Mrs. Eddy or to any other 
individual, together with making truth a proprietary 
article, is entirely wrong and diametrically opposed to 
the fundamentals of all pure and helpful teaching. 
Litigation never settles disputes spiritually, and though 
one may determine a copyright or any other legal ques- 
tion in a law court, no victory is gained for genuine 
science by newspaper ventilation of private animosity. 
Among people who do not countenance law suits, harsh 
invective and mutual denunciation often do quite as 
much harm as legal ruptures ; Peacemakers are they who 
living amid strife continue strifeless and are therefore 
led imperceptibly to an understanding of the eighth 
beatitude. 

"Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteous- 
ness' sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Close 
upon this logically follows the ninth and final beatitude. 

"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and perse- 
cute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely." 
The strength of these two beatitudes clearly lies in the 
fact that the clearest conceivable discrimination is made 
between simple persecution and persecution for the sake 
of righteousness. A genuine martyr is a witness to 
truth, some one who stands firm for conviction's sake 
against all persecution. No one is entitled to rank as 
a martyr who is persecuted for peculiarity's sake, when 
nothing but foolish waywardness, and perhaps utter 
lack of consideration for the feelings of others has 
brought reproach upon him. It can never be blessed to 
be condemned for wrongs committed, but to be perse- 
cuted on account of righteousness secures the martyr's 
diadem. Too many people reverse the beatitudes 
utterly by saying "I should not care so much if it were 
true of me," whereas to the reflective mind the fact that 
it is untrue robs its sting of all poison for there is no 
deadly venom which can touch our inner lives unless we 
are ourselves venomous.. Jesus says "Have no fear of 
those who can destroy the flesh and that is all they can 
do ;" which clearly means that we can all afford to stand 
securely in the consciousness of our integrity, regard- 
less of how the world may wag or what the oppressor 
may threaten. When we are on the height of Zion we 
care no longer for the world's applause and no longer 
are we afraid of its derision. Prophetlike, we have a 
message to deliver, we are Heaven's spokesmen and our 
reward is with the Eternal. We all need to be told of 
the inevitable consequences of error until we have < grown 
to that elevation spiritually where we can lose sight of 
all temporizing and live virtuously because we are in 
love with virtue. 



135 

Here we must take leave of this mighty subject. 
Skeleton Tessons on the Decalogue these discourses may 
be found, but however many suggestions of value may 
be contained within them, we must request every reader 

fully expounded in the foregoing V*f*- . t d 

Let this manual be provocative of thought and stuay 
and it will not circulate in vain. From Sinai to Zion is 
every soul's inevitable pilgrimage. 

Finis. 



LBFe'fo , 




THE LIVING 
DECALOGUE 



From SINAI TO ZIOM 



BY 

W. J. COLVILLE 



I 



AUTHOR OF 

"Old and New Psychology," "The Law of 
Correspondences Applied to Healing," "Des- 
tiny Fulfilled— Fate Conquered," "Text Books 
of Mental Therapeutics." (Ebc, (Etc. 




Class. j-3 

Book LL 

C 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



